Disassemble as Instructed
by orsa-verba
Summary: Five months after his final battle with Mysterio, Peter starts losing time. [ PeterBeck ] [ Spiderio ]
1. Begin Deconstruction

**Author's Note: **

A few quick things to get out of the way before we get started;

First, I'd like to thank my best friend, beta, and the creator of the fantastic moodboards that go with each chapter (featured on Ao3) JaySuoh . I'd also like to extend my thanks to the spider-crimes discord chat for being, frankly, the best cheerleaders I could've ever asked for.

This fic will be updating every day from now until Christmas Day, with the last chapters coming out between then and New Years. Chapters 2-8 were written, in part, to fill bkpt_challenges Christmas Challenge prompts.

Lastly, this fic is _not_ compliant with either the Spidey identity reveal or the post-credits scene at the end of FFH. There is also some utterly ridiculous and totally made up quantum-related science, which is really just there as a plot device and I urge you not to think about or look into too closely.

* * *

December in New York matched Peter's mood; absolutely miserable.

The temperature had dropped during the last week of November from seasonably frosty to practically Antarctic, followed by a slew of foul weather consisting mainly of sleet. No one had seen the sun in the last three days. The clouds didn't even have the decency to make interesting patterns, just blanketed the sky in slate gray.

Where there wasn't ice, there was gritty sidewalk salt crunching unpleasantly beneath hundreds of moving feet. Mounds of gray sludge sloped into drainpipes and hung from rooftops. The wind was a set of icy claws raking over uncovered skin, people walked with their heads down, just their eyes uncovered.

Peter's suit had thermo-regulators and an additional heating feature, but he still went home stiff and cold every night. Considering how poorly he slept these days, it really was just icing on the cake.

Rotten weather wasn't enough to postpone the impending holiday spirit, though. New York was as violently cheerful as ever when December 1st rolled around. Street lamps were wrapped in garlands and tinsel, fire escapes glittered with fairy lights, and every shop window boasted a medley of holiday dressings.

From high above the icy sidewalks, Peter could see it all. Union Square, lost amidst the labyrinthine thoroughfares of the Holiday Market. Fifth Avenue with its lantern lights and slow moving crowds, all pressed together to peer into the most expensive shop windows to see their elaborate displays.

Bright patches in a gray city that felt huge when you stood in them, yet from above proved to be so very, very small. They stuck out, like night lights on a child's bedroom wall, trying their hardest to ward off the darkness.

The feeling of looking out over his city used to fill Peter with joy. It was his home, his dominion, the place where he swore to make a stand at whatever personal cost there may be. Seeing sidewalks crammed with people even on the coldest nights felt like watching family as they walked home.

Now, he just felt isolated. He was a spectator, removed from the hubbub even when he stood at the center of it. Alone in a sea of people.

After five months, Peter felt he should be over this. Suffering a disassociation between himself and the people around him after a massive battle wasn't unusual, but it had never lasted this long. Christmas was coming up, for crying out loud. He was meant to be happy.

Most of his time was spent swinging through the city, looking for trouble. He didn't find much. The weather was bad enough that even criminals seemed to be taking their operations indoors. And with no justice to mete out, or villains to vent his frustrations on, Peter was left to stew in his own thoughts.

No matter where he started, somehow Peter always ended up on that suspension bridge in London. In his thoughts. In his nightmares.

They were multicolored hellscapes, his nightmares. Dancing with eyes and glowing orbs, hands that sought to crush his throat and the decaying corpses of everyone he knew. A train would come rocketing from nowhere on a straight trajectory through him, and in his nightmare he shatters like glass.

Peter spent a long time trying very hard not to think about Quentin Beck. It had been a waste of what little energy he had these days.

Putting Beck to rest was like trying to exorcise a ghost trapped in the catacombs of his mind. No matter what hall he took or hidden entrance he slipped into, Beck simply passed through the walls to reach him. Trying to ignore his presence only gave him the opportunity to slither his way in where he didn't belong. It was either acknowledge him or go crazy trying to ignore him.

So, for all the time Peter spent trying not to think of him, he spent much more with Beck on his mind.

He replayed their interactions on an infinite loop in the back of his skull, from the first day in Venice to the moment the light left Beck's eyes. Maybe if he ran through it all one more time, he could spot the lie. Maybe this time he could see where Beck the hero, the mentor, bled into the bastard who died on that damn bridge.

Finding a flaw in Beck's performance was an exercise in futility. Peter gave it up.

What he really needed to find was a good therapist, probably.

But who could he talk to? It was impossible to go into detail about the things that weighed on his mind without also talking about his identity as a superhero. That limited his options to therapists under S.H.I.E.L.D employment and he hadn't exactly been on speaking terms with them since London.

There was May, of course. And his friends, especially Ned and MJ, who had lived through the mess with him. What was he supposed to say to them, though? It's been five months, but I still feel like that train is coming for me. It's been five months, I feel like an alien in my skin and a stranger in familiar spaces. It's been five months, do you think Beck ever meant anything he said to me?

Those were the real questions he couldn't ask. The ones about Beck.

Why did he do any of it? The real why, the one that started him down the path to his crazy scheme in the first place. Peter knew the bare bones of his motivations and after five months of constantly thinking about him, he even understood.

Beck had been right, Peter hadn't been responsible enough for E.D.I.T.H. It should have been put in more capable hands than his.

But why hadn't it been good enough for Beck that Peter handed the glasses over? What possessed him to go on and do what he'd done in London? With E.D.I.T.H, he could have been a hero. The hero that he'd been on his way to becoming anyway. Hadn't he?

Except the Elementals were never real, nor was anything Beck had done. Only some of it was. But, which parts?

Peter's head was such a mess.

And that was before he started losing time.

* * *

It spoke to Peter's mental state that when he began to have trouble keeping track of time, he brushed it off as another symptom of his malaise.

At first it was inconsequential enough to be overlooked. A few minutes here and there that got jumbled in his mind, he reasoned. Peter would note the time at 11:32, then glance back and find it was 11:28. He told himself that it was just the exhaustion catching up with him.

Having dismissed his sudden lack of time-keeping, it was difficult for Peter to place exactly when it all started. What he could be sure of was when it got worse.

It happened on a Saturday. Peter walked from the bathroom, through the living room, into his bedroom. His head was down, eyes on his phone, and when he looked up, he found himself stepping out of the bathroom again.

Peter had frozen, confused. Was it possible that he'd turned around and made his way back to the bathroom without noticing? No, he was certain that he'd been about to step into his room. There had been no reason for him to turn around, anyway.

Except that he must have. Clearly. Or perhaps this was a very vivid case of deja vu. Yes, that had to be it. He was experiencing a very surreal moment of deja vu, which would pass in a few seconds. And reassured by this explanation, he'd gone about his day.

It kept happening. First in his apartment, then on his way to run errands, and then as he was walking down the street. Losing time was one thing, but an inability to keep track of where he was was another problem entirely.

One evening, Peter crouched on a rooftop on the corner of Bleeker and Sullivan. He suddenly felt faint and lowered his head, eyes shut. When he looked up again, he was clear on the opposite side of Washington Square Park, on an entirely different building.

At this point, Peter should have told someone.

He didn't.

Not just because reaching out for help felt as impossible as breathing water, but because he wasn't even sure what he'd say. Peter had gotten very good at convincing the people closest to him that, despite everything he'd been through, he really was alright. Turning to them now to explain the weeks, maybe months, of lost time and alarmingly brief blackouts seemed like a betrayal of their trust.

Calling his episodes "blackouts" wasn't right either. There were no gaps in his memory. Time just seemed to exist in a non-linear fashion, now space along with it. As though sometimes Peter just got jostled out of order and deposited somewhere ( somewhen ) different.

Peter resolved to deal with it on his own, which meant ignoring it as much as possible while doing absolutely nothing to solve the problem. Only he seemed to be affected by the wavering space-time continuum and as frustrating as it was to contend with, it really felt like a small inconvenience he ought to manage on his own. There was no pattern to his "blipping", as he came to dub it, but he never went far for long and it rarely happened two days in a row.

It was fine. He could handle it.

The first week of December, Peter blipped. Like every other blip, it caught him unawares and jarred him from the present into somewhere new. This one, though, was different. Where previous blips had been disorienting, this one was violent. A sensation not unlike being gripped by the skull and shaken around in his own skin so his internal organs rearranged.

Winded, vision spotty, Peter flung out his arms and caught himself against a wall that had absolutely not been there a moment ago. He stumbled and slammed his shoulder into the stone. The dull flash of pain was enough to drag the scattered pieces of his focus back together before he lost his footing completely.

Still gasping for breath, he yanked his mask off, not caring in the moment who may or may not be around as witness. He needed to breathe. Great lungfuls of damp air, which were nowhere near cold enough for winter in New York.

Finally, Peter steadied his breathing and tried to assess his surroundings. At first, he wasn't sure he was seeing things correctly. Rather than balanced on the edge of a skyscraper rooftop, Peter now found himself in a brick tunnel, cut through by water.

The abrupt change in elevation was not nearly as concerning as the fact that Peter felt familiar with this place. A memory was knocked loose in the back of his mind, but trying to absorb it while disoriented was a losing battle. And as if all that wasn't enough, his spider-sense began to flare over his skin, whining its warning across his thoughts.

Peter swung his head around, looking left and right frantically in search of whatever approaching presence his senses were trying to warn him about. It didn't feel like danger, but his spider-sense was definitely unsettled by whatever it was. Not a good sign, especially when Peter ascertained that he was standing on a strip of stone pathway leading out onto water at either end.

Just as he was beginning to panic, caught between whether to run right or left away from whatever was coming, someone rounded a hidden corner on his right.

Quentin Beck stopped when he caught sight of him.

Peter's spider-sense sputtered into stunned silence.

For a length of time that stretched beyond a moment, they both just stood there staring at one another in silence. Peter's mind was as blank as a sheet of paper, unable to process what was happening in front of him. That Beck could be... here. Wherever here was.

No. Not where, when.

The realization slammed into Peter and knocked the wind out of him a second time. Beck was dressed in the practical version of his Mysterio costume, chestplate glowing in the lowlight, cape falling from his broad shoulders. There were no glasses on his face, or gun in his hand. He looked like the man Peter had first met, the hero who he'd stumbled over himself to fight beside.

And he knew, knew, that it was fake. Everything from the costume he wore to whatever words were about to come out of his mouth were nothing but a performance. Lies and misdirection that Peter fell for once. Never again.

Yet... Peter saw something in Beck's expression that he couldn't account for. Concern, and closely after it, what may have been relief.

"Peter." Beck greeted, like he had any right to, like he had permission to just say his name.

Then, he started walking towards him. Peter shoved himself off the wall hastily, standing straight and tense. Thoughts scrambled around his mind at mach speed, trying to organize themselves before Beck got close enough to do anything.

Whenever this was, Beck clearly didn't see Peter as a threat yet. He carried himself with confidence and a projected friendliness that the man Peter remembered lacked. The way he was acting, the waterlogged tunnel, and the practical suit told Peter all he needed to know.

This was Venice. Specifically, this was the narrow strip of dock just outside where he'd officially met Quentin Beck for the first time. The Beck walking towards him had just lied through his teeth in a room full of S.H.I.E.L.D agents and fooled every single one of them. Including Peter.

And oh, god, he was right there. Not even five feet away, and Peter still had no idea what to do. He didn't have time to come up with a plan or make a complex decision, he just grabbed onto the first thing to come to him and ran with it.

"Mr. Beck!" It sounded wrong when he said it now. Vile. "I, uh... What are you doing here?"

Beck stopped, close enough Peter could pick out the intricate detailing on his chestplate if he'd been looking. Panic set his pulse racing. Ask anyone, playing it cool was not one of Peter's strengths, even under the best of circumstances. He knew he hadn't sounded convincing, but maybe that would work out.

Had he been this awkward and on-edge around Beck before his betrayal? The screenplay of memories constantly going in the back of his mind never featured him, really, it was all Beck and his lies. When had Peter left the meeting? Oh, fuck, what if he had already been gone too long to justify his presence now?

Beck was frowning. Peter wanted to run. But then he looked closer and for a moment, he thought he saw confusion there in Beck's eyes.

It was gone as quickly as he picked up on it. Beck's expression smoothed over, the furrow in his brow replaced by a slight tilt Peter read as amused.

"I was just heading out."

"Oh. Right." Peter scrambled for something to say. "Patrolling the city?"

"Something like that."

Something like that. The bastard. The lying, cheating, heartless bastard.

"Okay. I mean, good. That's good." It wasn't. Beck was probably headed out to double check whatever setup there had been for the Fire Elemental's appearance in Prague. "I... was just leaving."

Peter had to get out of here. Never mind that he was trying to lie to his deceased enemy, who was arguably the best liar he'd ever met, there were more pressing concerns. Like the fact that he was wearing a suit that hadn't been created yet and if Beck looked too closely, his critical eye was bound to notice. Or the fact that Peter was standing there, talking to Quentin Beck, in the wrong time.

There was a Peter already in this time period, who had already gone back to his room, honestly believing he could have a normal vacation. If the other Peter didn't show up, there was also the matter of S.H.I.E.L.D, probably not very far away. And Quentin Beck.

Why did everything come back to Quentin Beck?

Beck lifted a hand and Peter forced himself not to flinch. He waited for his spider-senses to start screaming at him, but they stayed confoundingly silent. The hand Beck raised came to rest against the side of Peter's neck.

Beck smiled at him.

"Hey," he said, voice low. "It's all gonna be okay. We're going to be fine."

Peter's heart flipped, fumbling on the execution and jamming itself painfully into his ribs.

There was something in the way Beck was looking at him, how he had purposefully reached for his neck and not his shoulder, that felt alarmingly intimate. Not just friendly or comforting, but a new level of fabricated affection Peter had never had to actually deal with. He didn't know what to do with it.

He did know that it made him feel sick. Every muscle in his body was begging to tense and coil, then throw every ounce of power he had into one good, solid strike to Beck's jaw. Or maybe his nose. Something that would hurt and scar so Beck could never forget it.

How dare he stand there and just lie? They were going to be okay? Of course they were! Every perceived danger they would encounter was completely controlled by Beck himself. He was the master of their fates and if he had his way, which he would, they would both walk away.

And then he'd try to kill Peter later. Over and over and over again.

Peter didn't bother to smile.

"Yeah." he forced out. "Yeah, of course."

Beck patted the side of his neck, then stepped around him and continued down the stone walkway without so much as a farewell. Peter stood rooted to the spot, mask clutched between his hands so tightly his fists were shaking.

He could go after him. He could follow Beck right now.

But before he could decide to, an invisible force grabbed him and dragged him violently back through time.

* * *

Scott Lang had given his phone number to every Avenger willing to take it, which included Peter. Besides the occasional check-in or update on the general status of their respective coasts, they didn't talk much. Despite this, Scott picked up after only two rings.

"He-ey, Peter Parker! My fellow insectoid Avenger! Well, arachnoid Avenger. Anyway, how-"

"I think I'm jumping through time," Peter interrupted. "And I don't know how to stop."

There was a beat of silence, then;

"Let me go get Dr. Pym. Stay on the line, kiddo."

Peter talked with Dr. Pym for almost thirty minutes. He, his wife, his daughter Hope, and Scott were all on the next flight out of San Francisco to New York.

Peter met them at LaGuardia Airport, from where they took a taxi to Industry City. Introductions were made along the way, but for the most part, Peter was quiet.

He'd blipped back to the same rooftop after his encounter with Beck five months in the past. Everything was back to normal, except that the sun had risen, and when he asked KAREN what time it was, she'd told him it was past 8AM. More than six hours had gone, but Peter had only been in the past for ten minutes, at most.

Then he'd blipped again that morning. Just fifteen minutes and six blocks over, and when Peter reappeared in his apartment barely five minutes had passed. The jumps were inconsistent and without pattern. Peter was terrified of when the next one might hit.

Under any other circumstances, Dr. Pym's mobile lab would have made Peter starry-eyed. Dr. Pym's work was a point of fascination, especially in regards to its newer applications, but Peter lacked the energy for enthusiasm. He followed Hope into the lab once it had been made sizeable, flanked by Scott, who kept shooting him concerned looks.

If his furtive glances were anything to go by, Peter was looking worse for wear.

The second floor of the lab was still being outfitted with monitors and apparatuses of unknown use, by enormous ants no less. The finished half consisted predominantly of a suite sectioned off with glass, with a monitoring center stationed right beside it.

"I'm sorry it's not more furnished." Janet Van Dyne apologized. "We threw it together in a rush."

"It's not meant for comfort." Dr. Pym said. "You said that whenever you- what did you call it -blip, you come back to where you were beforehand?"

"That's right."

"Well, consider this your return point. It's a controlled environment that we can monitor you from and ensure that you don't blip out in the middle of Times Square, then show back up again in front of a bunch of tourists."

Peter shrugged the duffel bag he'd stuffed with extra clothes and his basic electronics higher on his shoulder. He and Dr. Pym had already discussed this the night before on the phone, so it wasn't a surprise.

Lying to May still felt awful, but her worrying wasn't going to help fix this. He'd made something up about where he was going and been purposefully vague about how long he'd be gone. She must be used to his secrets, because she barely batted an eyelash.

While the Pym-Van Dyne family began turning things on and directing the ants, Scott followed Peter into the containment chamber. It was sparse, like Janet had said. A bed against one wall, a desk with a rolling chair, and a couch that had probably seen better days. There was a door in the wall that led into a cramped bathroom with a standing shower and no tub.

Peter dropped his duffel onto the bed and sank down beside it. Scott shoved his hands in his pockets and stood, bouncing on his toes.

"I'm sorry to bother you guys with this." Peter said.

"What? Pfft, you're hopping through time, that's like, incredibly cool." Scott joked. "Seriously, I'm glad you called."

"You didn't have to come."

"Sure I did. Us bugs gotta stick together."

Peter smiled. He was tired and distant, still trapped in his bubble of isolation, but Scott was putting himself very close to the edge of it. He appreciated that.

They talked about nothing for the next ten minutes, which seemed to be a talent of Scott's. Once he got going, he spun off on all kinds of entertaining tangents. It kept Peter distracted from everything else that was going on.

He'd just finished a story about a donkey, which had Peter actually slapping his knee with laughter, when Dr. Pym called; "Scott!"

"I think that's my cue." Scott grinned. To Peter's surprise, he reached out and ruffled his bangs. "Be right outside, kiddo."

Peter stood up as he left, eyeing the glass door as it slid shut behind him. Now alone in the glass chamber, Peter felt much more like a specimen in a terrarium than he was comfortable with. He'd had nightmares like this, right after he'd started mutating. Being captured. Experimented on.

He shook his head and turned to the monitoring station.

"Do I need to do anything?" he called through the glass.

"Stay put." Dr. Pym ordered.

Peter did as instructed.

A long time passed during which Peter stood as still as he could and let the Pym-Van Dyne's run their tests. He couldn't see the displays from inside the containment chamber, which meant all he had to go off of were the reactions each test garnered. Thus far, there had been a lot of frowning, many muttered conversations, and a lot of pointing.

Eventually Scott struck up another conversation, successfully occupying him so he'd stop fidgeting.

It was maybe an hour before Dr. Pym stood up and opened the door to the chamber, inviting him out. Peter approached the monitoring station slowly, eyes flicking warily between the various screens. Some of the readouts he understood, others were foreign to him.

"I have good news and I have bad news." Dr. Pym said, returning to his seat. "The good news is, we know what's wrong with you. The bad news is, we have absolutely no idea what's causing it."

"For some reason, your quantum frequency is resonating much higher than it should be." Hope continued for her father. "See this, here? You should be down here."

There was a large disparity between the two lines she'd pointed to. Peter twisted his fingers together nervously.

"And you don't know... why that is?"

"No. Nor do we know why that's causing you to blip through time." Dr. Pym pointed his pen at him. "When was the last time you blipped?"

"This morning."

"Not far?"

"Fifteen minutes ahead and six blocks over, then back."

"And before?"

Peter's eyes shot away, avoiding the gazes of the other people in the room. He settled for watching an ant with a soldering gun.

"Five months ago." he said. "Venice."

Janet typed something in and data points began appearing on a nearby screen. There were already several others logged from instances Peter had recounted on the phone.

"For right now, we're stuck." Janet admitted. "Until you blip again, we can't gather any additional data or figure out if something is triggering it."

Dr. Pym sat forward and jabbed his pen more aggressively at Peter.

"We may not know why this is happening to you, Peter, or how, but I know for a fact that messing with time is a dangerous thing. Now, you can't control where or when you're going, so you're bound to run into people at some point. That's all fine and good, but you've got to remember that you're an outsider there. Anything new you introduce to the timeline is going to ripple up here and we will feel the effects."

"I'm not going to try to mess with time, sir." Peter frowned.

Dr. Pym gazed at him.

"It can be tempting to do so." he warned quietly.

Peter didn't want to think about that.

They decided to order dinner from a nearby Mexican place. While Janet sorted the orders and Dr. Pym continued to pour over his test results, Scott and Hope walked Peter back into the containment suite. Hope smiled sympathetically as he dropped gracelessly down on the edge of the bed.

"I know it's not the answer you wanted, but I promise that we're going to do whatever we can to figure this out."

"I wasn't expecting a quick fix." Peter assured her.

"I was." Scott sighed wistfully.

Hope rolled her eyes and knocked him lightly in the side with her elbow.

"Try and be patient, Peter." she said. "It's all a waiting game now."

As it happened, they didn't have to wait long. Almost as soon as Hope slid the door shut behind herself and Scott, Peter blipped out of the present day.


	2. Part 1

The world went white. Peter was aware of himself moving in space while remaining totally still. For a split second, he was conscious of his entire body shaking to the point he felt he might disintegrate, before his senses shut down.

Then, abruptly, he had legs again and they were buckling under his weight, bearing him to the ground. Instinctively, Peter caught himself on his arms before he smacked face first into the frozen dirt. No sooner had he stopped falling than sensory overload slammed into him like a tidal wave moving at mach 5.

There's no good way to describe the sensation of losing and regaining six senses in quick succession. Imagine a record scratch over every nerve ending, or the universe blinking. Everything turns off and then back on again in a horrible cacophony, from nothingness to everything all at once.

Peter heaved the contents of his stomach onto the ground. Measly as they were, the next few moments were spent choking wetly on nothing, until his throat felt raw.

As his breathing steadied, chest rattling with his last heave, Peter eased himself back onto his feet. He was unsteady at first, knees quivering, and he swayed once he was upright. A stumble forward brought strength back into his limbs and he took a few, blind steps in the direction he was facing.

Blinking his vision into focus, Peter found himself on the wooded edge of a desolate park. It was still winter, ice clinging to the few playground structures he could see and a teeth-chattering chill in the air. Peter crossed his arms over his chest, the cold seeping in past his flimsy long-sleeved shirt. He made a mental note to keep a jacket on when possible, from now on.

A light dusting of snow fell as Peter shuffled his way further from the trees. The fluffy flakes disappeared as soon as they touched the ground, adding to the eerie night time atmosphere. Peter turned slowly as he walked, trying to find something by which to get his bearings. There wasn't much. Dead earth, an abandoned baseball pitch, and a few high powered lights casting sickly white over patches of the park.

Jumping backwards five months had been more painful, but less jarring, than this blip. Every other blip had been much smaller, both in increments of time and distance, which made him certain that wherever he was now it was _far_ from Dr. Pym's lab. That was nothing to panic over, though. He'd only stayed in London for ten, maybe fifteen minutes at most. It was just a matter of time until he blipped back to the present.

All he had to do was wait.

Peter tipped his head back and watched the sky, tracing snowflakes as they descended leisurely from the darkness overhead. His breath clouded before him. The night was quiet.

There was really no telling how long he'd been disoriented this time. Sensory overload tended to linger with him, so it was possible that he'd already been in this time for quite a while. Or maybe it had only been a minute or two of that agonizing overstimulation, he couldn't be sure.

Either way, he was cold and getting colder. The tips of his ears were growing numb and he shook with a persistent shiver. It couldn't be long now.

Glancing around the frozen park offered no indication of the time, either presently or when he'd first arrived. Based solely on the subtle chattering of his teeth, Peter was sure that he'd been standing there for at least ten minutes.

He would blip soon, he was sure of it. An invisible force would tear him through the fabric of space-time back to Dr. Pym's lab. At least it would be warm on the other side, and his food would probably have arrived at that point.

Peter waited. Nothing happened.

His pulse quickened and his breathing grew short. Snow continued to gently fall and catch on his eyelashes. Wide eyes frantically scanned his surroundings, as if he might _see_ the blip coming.

But nothing was there. No disturbance in the air or shift in atmosphere. Peter wasn't moving, either from the spot where he stood or the time he existed in.

Anxiety became dread, and dread became _panic_.

Why wasn't he blipping back? Peter was absolutely certain that he'd been standing in this park longer than he'd been in London. Was it because he'd moved? No, that wasn't possible. The force moving him through time seemed to care nothing for where he was when it moved him.

Peter's breathing was labored, ragged. His shivering had become a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the cold.

This was all wrong. London had been the farthest he'd ever gone, but he'd been there _before_. Peter was certain he'd never seen this park and had absolutely no idea where he was, let alone _when_. Why was he here? Why on Earth would his quantum frequency drag him through time and deposit him here, in this random, empty field in the middle of... of... he didn't even know where!

It wasn't fair. _It wasn't fair!_ Peter's eyes stung as hot, angry tears blurred his vision and began to cascade down his cheeks. Why was this happening to him? Hadn't he been through _enough_?!

Every breath he tried to drag into his chest felt like swallowing nails.

Was it asking too much for life to give him a break? He'd failed to save Mr. Stark, failed to suss out Mysterio's lies before it was almost too late, lost his chance to have a normal vacation with his friends. And now! Now he was blipping through _time_, when all he really wanted to do was go home and spend Christmas with May.

Was it really too much for him to ask for one _fucking_ holiday?!

Peter collapsed in on himself. He crouched, hands buried in his hair, choking out broken sobs. The more he cried the less he could breathe, and the less he breathed the more panicked he felt.

What if he never went back? What if he was just _stuck_ here? Peter's head pounded, his thoughts a senseless, frenzied cluster. There was no way to contact anyone, no way for him to make his way back on his own. He was stranded until the whims of the universe took him home and the longer he stayed, the less likely that seemed.

Just as Peter was beginning to feel like he was falling apart at the seams, a voice cut through the empty night.

"Hey... Are you- Are you okay?"

Peter lifted his head. He could just make out a figure through his tears, much closer than he had expected them to be. How had he missed their approach?

With a hiccup, he scrubbed his sleeve over his eyes. Though it did nothing to hide the evidence of his meltdown, it did help to clear his vision. When he looked back up, the stranger was still there.

It was a young man wearing a navy blue parka, a plastic bag hanging from one elbow. The fur trimmed hood was pushed back and a knit cap had been pulled down over his ears. His cheeks and nose were rosy, bitten by the cold. He didn't look much older than Peter himself, though he was certainly taller.

"I'm..." Peter faltered. He was so obviously a mess that lying seemed pointless, but affirming his distress felt worse.

That one word seemed like enough to convey exactly how he was doing though, because the young man stepped forward. He wasn't imposing, seemed almost hesitant, but once he'd taken one step he took another with more confidence.

"I'm Quin." he introduced.

Peter lowered his head and rubbed at his face again. There were still tears rolling down his cheeks and he didn't know how to make them _stop_.

"Peter."

"Peter." Quin repeated, as if to be sure he'd heard it right. "You live around here?"

Peter shook his head.

"Anyone you can call? To pick you up, or something?"

Again, he shook his head.

"Hey."

This time, Quin's voice came from much closer. Peter peeked over his arms and found him crouched down beside him, at eye level. Quin had blue eyes, Peter couldn't help noting. Startling, vibrant blue eyes and a mole above his lip. Like an old timey movie star.

"It's supposed to get down below freezing tonight. You really don't have anywhere to go?"

Peter sniffed and shook his head a third time.

"No." he said thickly, voice raw.

Quin frowned. He bit the inside of his cheek, deliberating for a moment before nodding to himself.

"Alright." Quin stood up, extracting a hand from his coat pocket, only to jut it out at Peter. "Come on, kid. You're comin' with me."

Peter stated blankly at his hand, then up at Quin. The older boy cocked a brow at him.

"What? You _wanna_ stay out here?"

No, he didn't. His episode had drained whatever warmth was left in his body, leaving Peter achingly numb. The blip had yet to reclaim him and with no idea when, or if it would, his options were limited. Stay here in the snow, or follow Quin.

Peter took his hand and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

"I don't live too far." Quin promised. "Park's a shortcut."

He didn't let go of Peter's hand as he started walking. Peter trailed after him, focus split between how warm his palm was and making sure he didn't kick Quin's heels.

They crossed the park, through the playground and then over a small hill Peter hadn't noticed in the dark. On the other side, a slope led down to a tattered sidewalk with more cracks than pavestones, meandering along beside a two-lane road with a faded divide.

As they headed west down the sidewalk, headlights crested the horizon, moving toward them. A truck rolled past in the opposite direction, the faint sound of Christmas carols echoing from inside.

"Is this really okay?" Peter asked, after the silence between them had stretched over two hills and a break in the sidewalk.

Quin shot a sidelong glance over his shoulder, frowning faintly, and flexed his fingers against Peter's palm.

"Is what?"

Fearing that he was about to let go, Peter squeezed his hand tightly. Quin relaxed, the furrow in his brow smoothing out. Peter wasn't entirely sure what they'd just communicated to one another, but he was glad for the hand still wrapped around his.

"Taking me home with you. I mean, I could be a criminal or something."

Quin turned back to look at him again. His eyes swept over him, from his chattering teeth to red ears.

"Nah, you're not." he dismissed flippantly. "And if you were, I could take you."

A startled laugh escaped Peter and bounced in the air between them. Quin blinked, then grinned wide, mischievous and far too pleased with himself. Something about the amused glitter in his crystal blue eyes made Peter laugh again, then dissolve into giggles.

It felt good to laugh after crying so much. Scientifically, he knew it was the result of endorphins being released in his brain, but he felt like Quin's presence was more to thank. Peter was so distracted that he didn't notice how Quin had pulled him up next to him until their shoulders bumped.

The giggles died and Quin's grin became a slight smile, but they stayed in matchstep. Between them, their hands swung lightly.

They turned off the main road and onto a wider sidewalk leading into a quiet neighborhood. Mismatched buildings crowded tiny lawns, dotted with holiday decorations. There was a gaudy blowup menorah taking up most of one yard, while the plot beside it held a metal cutout of Santa's sleigh, garnished with tinsel.

Quin lived in a narrow house with a slip thin porch. The outside was in need of new paint and the roof looked one storm away from needing repairs, but the yard was tidy and warm light pooled behind the curtains. Someone had carefully strung Christmas lights up, simple white ones that glowed like tiny stars.

"Shoes off," Quin ordered as they stepped inside.

Peter hastened to comply and toed off his sneakers, suddenly glad he was wearing socks without any holes in them. He hurried down the hall after Quin, following him into the kitchen. It was small, but clean, with walls painted robin egg blue, matched with white cabinets.

Unsure what to do with himself now he was actually standing in a stranger's home, Peter let his eyes drift around the room. They settled, inevitably, on Quin.

The plastic bag had been set on the counter while Quin removed his cap and coat, leaving both hanging over the back of a chair at the kitchen table. Under his parka, Quin had a thin, sharp build. He reminded Peter of the house; tall and a little cramped, like his body hadn't quite figured out how to grow outward while also growing up.

"Your house is nice." Peter said.

"It's alright." Quin shrugged as he put away the few groceries he'd been carrying. "It's home."

Peter watched curiously as Quin retrieved a jug of milk from the fridge; an actual glass jug with a top he had to work to pop open. The milk went into a pot Quin set on the stove, then back into the fridge. After clicking the burner to medium heat, he took a round tin from the top of the fridge.

"Here," he said, pushing the open tin across the counter towards Peter. There were Christmas cookies inside, the kind with colored sugar for sprinkles. "Have as many as you want."

Peter, who had forgotten he was hungry, shuffled over to the counter and took a cookie. They were buttery and sweet. Quin nudged the tin at him when he finished, encouraging him to take another. So he did.

He stood at the kitchen counter, watching Quin break a bar of chocolate into smaller pieces between his hands. Quin had big hands. Knuckles with scabs on them and long, dextrous fingers. He dropped the chocolate chunks into the pot of steaming milk and stirred.

Quin served them hot chocolate in two big, ceramic mugs. They took them to the table with the tin of cookies and sat there, waiting for them to cool between daring sips.

It felt painfully normal. The kind of simplicity that Peter hadn't had in years. Sacrificing his ordinary life to be a hero was a noble thought, one he'd bought into fully when Spiderman had first been born. Now, though... Peter yearned for uncomplicated things, like drinking cocoa with friends and not worrying about the next threat to come bearing down on New York.

Which felt selfish of him. He shouldn't be sitting here, enjoying sweets with a stranger, he should be looking for a way to get back to his own time. No matter how nice this was, it wasn't where he belonged. Just talking to Quin changed the course of events at some point in history and being in his home, eating his food and sipping hot chocolate he made, was definitely worse. If Peter was smart, he'd get up and leave.

But he couldn't bring himself to. No matter how immature, he felt that the universe _owed_ him this. A few moments of respite, where he could just exist without dire consequences. No one to save, no world on the verge of collapse. If only he could turn off his thoughts and stop _thinking_ about how much he shouldn't be here, enjoying this moment.

"Hey." Quin said, breaking him out of his own cyclic thoughts for the second time that night. "Stop that."

Peter was about to ask what he meant, but stilled as Quin reached out and cupped one side of his face. The palm of his hand was hot, and big, and fit perfectly against Peter's cheek. His thumb rubbed the tear tracks still visible on his skin, wearing them away with a touch.

"Stop... what?"

"Thinking so much. You're making yourself sad again."

"I'm not sad." Peter protested.

"Yeah you are." Quin countered. "And whatever it is, it's probably worth being upset over, but quit it anyway, okay? You're fine. You're here, you're okay, and whatever you're thinking about can't get you."

The way he said it, Peter wondered what Quin thought was going on. Did he give the impression of a person running away? Maybe he was, in some respects. Always trying to avoid something new, be it Mr. Stark's death or Mysterio's betrayal. Just another shadow trailing after him Peter couldn't acknowledge.

And Quin was right. They couldn't reach him here.

"Thanks, Quin."

He smiled shyly and Quin stared, his pretty blue eyes wide. It may have been Peter's imagination, but he thought he saw a soft dusting of pink on his cheekbones.

"Yeah." Quin cleared his throat, moving his hand back to his mug. "No problem, kid."

"You know you're _also_ a kid, right?"

"Shaddup, I'm legal."

Peter laughed and like that, everything was fine again.

Between them the tin of cookies dwindled to almost nothing. They chose to burn their tongues rather than wait for the hot chocolate to cool, which was worth it for the rich sweetness and warmth it spilled through their chests. Under the table, their knees knocked together, first by accident and then on purpose.

Not much talking was done, but that was okay. Peter enjoyed Quin's presence. He liked sitting beside him, watching the way he slouched and held his mug, refusing to use the handle. There were more beauty marks on his face, Peter could pick them out now they were close.

Distantly, the lock on the front door clicked. Quin was up and out of his seat even before a woman's voice called; "Quin, I'm home!"

"Welcome back, mom!"

Peter tensed, hesitant to follow Quin out into the hall. Somehow, it hadn't occurred to him that someone else might be coming home that night. Sitting at the kitchen table as they had been felt like being in a bubble where the rest of the world didn't exist.

Dr. Pym would probably tell him to avoid further interaction where possible, but what was Peter meant to do? There was a small kitchen window he could shimmy out of, but that seemed excessive. He'd already spent so much time with Quin, meeting his mother wasn't likely to change very much. He hoped.

At the other end of the hall, Quin was helping his mother out of her coat. Her scarf was already slung over his arm, along with her purse, even though there was a small table right by the door where she could have put them. Peter stood by the doorway to the kitchen, considering how quickly he could slip out the window after all.

The woman was smaller than her son by almost a head, so he had to look down to smile at her. She was pretty, in a tired sort of way, with thick brown hair and the same bright blue eyes as her son. Weariness lined her face and sagged on her shoulders, but she carried herself with straight-backed dignity despite it. The dress she wore was simple, but fit her well, and matched her necklace.

She reminded Peter of someone who had probably been exceptionally beautiful in high school, though the years since hadn't been especially kind to her. Her simple prettiness and gentle smile made him fond of her even at a distance. Quin said something and smiled like he'd won the lottery when she laughed.

She glanced past her son and noticed Peter standing at the end of the hall. He tensed, expecting her to react with suspicion, but all she did was smack her son lightly on the chest.

"Quin! You should have told me you brought a _friend_ over." she scolded.

This time, Peter was sure he wasn't imagining the tinge of red on Quin's cheeks.

"He's not a friend," he scoffed, making a show of turning away to hang up his mother's coat. "He's a vagabond I rescued from freezing to death."

But he winked at Peter, just to show he was kidding.

His mother rolled her eyes fondly, patting his back as she stepped around him. Peter shifted his weight nervously as she approached, only to be greeted with a sunny smile and an outstretched hand.

"Well, vagabond or not, it's nice to meet you, hun." she said. There was a faint southern lilt in her voice, like she had tried to kick her accent, but couldn't quite manage. "I'm Henrietta, but you can call me Hen."

"Oh, no," Peter fumbled. "I-I couldn't-"

Only it was very hard to say no to Henrietta's gentle face, so he ended up caving anyway. He shook her hand, which was small and delicate and made him far too aware of his own strength.

"I'm Peter. It's very nice to meet you, Miss Henrietta."

Henrietta's smile was kind, if a little exasperated. The smile morphed into a small frown as she looked Peter over.

"How long were you out in that snow?" she asked, sounding concerned.

"Uh," Peter said, eloquently. "I don't know? Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour?"

"And you let him sit here in those wet clothes?" Quin ducked his head sheepishly. "Oh, you."

Henrietta shooed her son into the kitchen, instructing him to get a pot of water going for pasta. Peter, already being herded towards the stairs, tried to protest.

"I'd hate to impose-"

"Nonsense. You'll stay for dinner." Henrietta interjected. "We'll find you something of Quin's to borrow and you can get cleaned up."

And that was that.

There were four doors on the second floor and a window at the end of the hall. Almost immediately across from the stairs was Quin's room.

Movie posters hung on the walls, along with pages and covers from National Geographic magazines. There was a desk scattered with textbooks and a worktable beside it, covered in half-finished miniatures. Peter recognized a space shuttle, a diorama of an old Western town, and the framework for an intricate model of the Millennium Falcon.

Henrietta scavenged a pair of dark sweatpants and a pull-over hoodie from Quin's closet, along with thick woolen socks.

"MIT?" Peter couldn't help but ask, when he caught sight of the logo on the front of the hoodie.

"Mmhm!" Henrietta beamed with obvious pride. "Acceptance letters haven't gone out yet, but we're expecting one any day now."

She ushered him back out into the hall.

Their bathroom was a square with little room between its various fixtures. Henrietta had kitted it out with a pale yellow shower curtain, fluffy white towels, and a dark blue bath mat between the tub and the sink. A small hamper sat half full by the door, which she told him to use for his clothes and put outside.

"I'll put them in the dryer for you, hun. Now, the shower's a bit finicky..."

Peter was left alone to strip down with the shower running. It wasn't until steam began to pour from behind the curtain that he realized how cold he still was. He hopped under the hot spray and almost leapt back out again, the contrast between it and his skin was so intense.

After a minute, the water became bearable. Peter ducked beneath the steaming jets and allowed the constant drone of water on his skin to numb his senses. White noise blotted the world around him, encasing him in silence.

With Quin and his mother, Peter felt like a person again. How simple would it be to live the lie and be a hapless runaway, depending on the kindness of strangers to get him through the night? Just a young man who needed help as much as the next person. No powers, no villains, no apocalypse on the horizon.

But it wasn't real. As much as Peter yearned to ignore his responsibilities and give in to this wonderful, welcoming pocket of reality, he couldn't. If a blip wasn't coming for him, he had to find a way to contact whatever scattered Avengers existed in this time. Or at least, not stick around here and risk dragging this family into his world.

He'd stay for dinner. Once his clothes were dry, he'd change back and make some excuse to leave. That was the right thing to do, and it was what he _would_ do, he decided.

That was an easier decision to make before he was wearing Quin's clothes and standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Mother and son were cooking dinner together, as they likely had many, many times before. To Peter, it was such a remarkably domestic sight that he wasn't sure it was right to insert himself into it, and hovered on the edges instead.

"Oh, Peter! There you are, hun." Henrietta smiled when she caught sight of him. "Feeling a little better?"

Peter nodded and returned her smile.

"Good. Would you mind helping Quin with the veggies?"

"I can make a salad." Quin grumbled.

"Not when you're still fussing with those onions you can't. Those were supposed to be in the sauce already, young man."

Peter slunk into the space on Quin's left, watching the taller boy sniff and rub at his eyes. They were teary and faintly irritated, but still so pretty and blue.

"Want me to do the onions?" he offered quietly.

"_No_, you can do the-" Quin glanced at him, then away, then looked back at him more directly. His eyes trailed down to the MIT hoodie, the sleeves bunched up to Peter's elbows so they wouldn't cover his hands. "-the... Yeah, you can finish the onions."

He pushed the cutting board over and handed Peter the knife, then busied himself with the ingredients for the salad. The onions proved particularly vindictive and soon they were both teary eyed and laughing. Their shoulders bumped as they tore iceberg lettuce, chopped tomatoes and cucumber, and pelted each other with cast-off pieces of apple.

Henrietta chided them gently and made them clean up, but it was worth it for the cheeky grin on Quin's face.

They sat down to a dinner of pasta bolognese and salad, like this was something they'd done before. Henrietta passed out thick slices of crusty garlic bread and encouraged both boys to take seconds when they wolfed down their first helpings. She pressed thirds on Peter, who didn't complain, and laughed when Quin stole the crust from her bread.

Conversation was cheery and directionless, touching on nothing more meaningful than the approaching holidays. Peter lapsed in and out of silence, growing more confident with his witty interjections as they earned the laughter of his hosts. They ate and chatted and that was all.

After dinner, both boys herded Henrietta out so they could do the washing up without her help. Between the two of them, the counters were cleaned and stove scrubbed in record time. It was as they were starting the dishes that Peter said;

"I should go."

And Quin said; "Don't. Stay the night."

Peter said okay.

Once the dishes were clean and dry, they retreated up to Quin's room. He had a lava lamp Peter hadn't noticed earlier, one that faded slowly through the colors of the rainbow. There was an old model of the solar system hanging above them too, and glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling.

They sat at the worktable, chairs pushed closely together and legs tangled, both hunched over the model of the Millenium Falcon. Peter mostly watched, though he itched to get his hands on the tiny pieces and begin assembling them. It was clear that this was not an activity Quin was used to sharing with others, which made even the chance to watch him feel like more than enough for Peter.

Some time later, Henrietta peeked around the door. Peter's clothes were washed and dried, folded into a neat little pile in her arms. He thanked her for them and she ruffled his hair, which had dried into an unruly mess of curls.

"Goodnight boys," she smiled. "Sleep tight."

"Night, mom."

"Goodnight, Miss Henrietta. And thank you for letting me stay."

"Don't thank me, hun, it's what any decent person would do."

She blew them a kiss and shut the door gently when she left, her footsteps fading back down the hall to her room.

Another hour passed of bickering over parts and puzzling together pieces before they decided to call it a night. While Quin went to find the fold-up palette in the hall closet, Peter slipped away to the bathroom. When he came back in his own clothes, shoes in hand, Quin didn't comment on it.

Lights were turned off, but not the lava lamp, leaving them in relative darkness. Peter shuffled under the comforter on his makeshift bed and tried to put his shoes on as quietly as possible. It was hard to tell if Quin noticed, because the next thing he did was toss a pillow at his head.

Peter caught it just before it hit his face.

"Thank you." he said. "For everything, Quin. You didn't have to do any of this."

"Didn't do much, really."

"Yeah you did! I would probably still be out there right now if you hadn't found me."

Quin scoffed as Peter settled into his makeshift bed, the tossed pillow beneath his head.

"Seriously? It's been hours. You would've found _somewhere_ to go."

"Probably not. I can be pretty stupid sometimes."

"You're not stupid."

Even in the scant light, Quin's eyes were visible, peering down at Peter from the bed. He had spoken with such clear sincerity that for a moment, Peter felt his heart leap into his throat.

"And stop saying thank you. You're not a burden. We're letting you crash here because we wanted you to stay, so quit acting like you're forcing yourself on us, alright?"

Peter swallowed, his heartbeat thrumming in his ears.

"Alright." he said faintly, tugging the comforter up to his chin.

"Alright." Quin echoed.

He rolled over and reached down, mussing a hand through Peter's hair. The gesture was so plainly affectionate that it was staggering. Had he really only known this young man for a few hours? Why did he feel like he'd spent whole summers laying in this pallet beside his bed?

"Goodnight, Quin." he said softly.

"Night, Peter."

Peter fell asleep with the knowledge that the next morning, all the problems he'd refused to deal with tonight would be there to torment him. He told himself it would be fine and he would find a way to make everything work out, if only so that he could keep this feeling of security that being with Quin and Henrietta gave him.


	3. Part 2

Peter woke up in Dr. Pym's lab. For a moment, he was confused by the plain white ceiling above him. Where were the plastic stars he'd been staring at before falling asleep? His spider-senses tingled, reaching out for clues to his whereabouts.

"Peter!"

Hope's voice sent Peter scrambling upright, scanning his surroundings frantically. He registered pseudo-familiar white walls and stainless steel fixtures before Scott and Hope appeared in his field of vision.

"He's back!" Hope called over her shoulder, hands gripping Peter by the shoulders. "You're back, hey, Peter, breathe, you're back."

It wasn't until she said something that Peter realized he was breathing erratically. He forced himself to inhale and hold it until his heartbeat slowed marginally, then exhale in a rush. Inhale, exhale, until his breathing was normal again.

Scott, a bracing hand on his back, wore an expression of concern.

"You alright, kiddo?"

Peter nodded and tried for a shaky smile, which mustn't have been very convincing if Scott's face were anything to go by.

"Yeah." he assured. "I'm okay. I'm- How long was I gone?"

"Almost eighteen hours." Hope said.

_Eighteen hours_? Peter lowered his head, grinding the heel of his hand into the space between his eyebrows. That was the longest he'd ever been gone, including the time he went back to Venice. That made sense, because he'd spent longer in the past this time, but it was still discomforting. A whole day had lapsed.

Scott helped him to stand as he tried to push off the bed, catching his elbow when his legs almost gave out. A moment to steady himself and Peter was upright. He shrugged Scott off with an assurance he felt fine and made his way slowly to the bathroom, where he splashed his face with water.

He was back. The blip had taken him when he was asleep and relocated back to the present. That was good, it should be a relief, and yet all he could think about was the empty pallet on Quin's bedroom floor.

What would he and his mother think when they woke up and found Peter gone? They seemed to assume he was some sort of runaway, so maybe they'd think he just went on running. If he'd known he was going to leave, he would have left a note thanking them, or... something.

Peter groaned and splashed his face again, scrubbing wet hands into his hair and pushing it away from his forehead. What was he _thinking_? He shouldn't have spent all that time with them to begin with, never mind leave them evidence of his existence. They were part of a time where he wasn't meant to be. Suddenly disappearing from their lives was a _good_ thing.

But it still felt lousy. Quin's home was the first place Peter had felt close to another human being in longer than he cared to admit. He missed it, even though his time there had been short.

Without drying off any, Peter wandered back out into the main chamber of the containment unit. Scott was pacing near the door and Hope had retreated back to the monitoring station, where both her parents stood muttering over displays.

"Hey." Scott said quietly as Peter approached. "Are you really okay?"

The answer to that was longer and more complicated than Peter was prepared to get into at the moment, so instead he just nodded.

Dr. Pym knocked on the glass wall, drawing their attention.

"Glad you're back with us, Peter." he said. "Do you know what time you jumped to?"

"No." Peter replied, walking over to speak through the glass. "I wasn't anywhere I recognized."

"So no idea where the jump took you? No landmarks you could describe?"

He shook his head.

"Can you at least tell us how long you were there?"

"At least five hours. I blipped out while I was sleeping, so it could've been more."

Dr. Pym turned to look at his wife, who was busy typing something into the computer. She glanced at him and nodded, then handed Hope a stylus, indicating a second graph below the one tracking his blips. Hope made a new set of marks.

Should he tell them about staying with Quin? It seemed like the kind of things Dr. Pym would want to know, but Peter couldn't see how it would be a relevant datapoint. He'd been warned about introducing outside influence on the past and he hadn't. One dinner with a stranger wasn't going to change the course of Quin or Henrietta's lives.

And selfishly, Peter wanted to keep those memories to himself. They were a comfortable reminder of what life could be like, especially in the middle of this mess.

He decided not to tell them about it. Instead, he cleared his throat and shifted his weight, trying to get a better look at the displays.

"So, what kind of readings did you get? Any idea what's happening?"

The Pym-Van Dyne family exchanged glances. Peter, not at all reassured by this, looked to Scott.

"I'm mostly here for moral support." Scott admitted, sounding sheepish.

Peter flashed him a grateful smile, then turned his attention back to the monitors.

"Your quantum frequency dropped." Janet said. "You went from registering high, to far below normal levels in about thirty seconds. Then, your frequency spent the next eighteen hours shifting rapidly between high and low until it spiked suddenly, then you were back."

"Which means... what?"

Dr. Pym sighed and pulled his glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose. The Van Dyne women looked equally uneasy, though they hid it behind soft frowns. Apprehension twisted in Peter's gut.

"On a quantum level, you're vibrating." Dr. Pym said, replacing his glasses. "Shaking so fast it's moving you through time and space."

"That's not good. At least, that doesn't sound good." Scott said. "It's not good, is it?"

Hope gave Scott a wry look.

"No, Scott."

"I was sort of hoping this was one of those times where I was wrong."

Peter ran both hands through his hair. He wasn't a quantum theorist, but he got the gist of what _vibrating_ implied. That on some level, he was being shaken apart, dispersed, and then reforming in a different time and space.

And Scott was right. That wasn't good. In fact, it was very, very bad.

"We need to stabilize you. Soon." Dr. Pym said, gravelly.

"What about what's causing it?" Scott piped up. "I mean, something's gotta be doing this to him, right? He didn't just wake up like this."

"You're right," Janet agreed. "It's likely that something is causing Peter's frequency to fluctuate, but the problem in dealing with the space-time continuum is that it's possible that the cause could be coming from anywhere, any time."

"Like it hasn't happened yet?"

"Or happened a very long time ago."

Peter spun on his heel and walked away. Behind him, the Pym-Van Dyne's and Scott continued to discuss his predicament amongst themselves, leaving him to pace along the back wall of his suite. He was glad to be left alone, because right then he couldn't be sure if he was even capable of words.

The thing about vibrating was that most of the time there really wasn't any harm in it. But if you shook something hard enough, for long enough, at just the right speed and force it did one of two things; break or completely disintegrate. If on a quantum level Peter was actually _vibrating_, then the longer it continued the less present in his own time he would become. The less present in _any _time. And then eventually, he'd disperse into particles scattered across space-time.

Which would make the second time in his life that he turned to dust. Looking down the barrel of non-existence again was more numbing than Peter would have expected.

He missed Quin. If he'd woken up on Quin's bedroom floor, it would have been to his big blue eyes and his cheeky smile. Henrietta would have made them breakfast. Peter could have pretended to be a normal, uninteresting teenager.

Instead, this was his reality.

* * *

Over the next few days, Peter was understandably subdued. He tried to drag himself from his funk by participating in the research being done on him, but there was only so much he could understand. Quantum mechanics weren't his area of expertise. Still, the Pym-Van Dyne family humored him and at least tried to guide him through the various tests they were doing.

Not much was learned. Several more blips were plotted, some minor enough that he only moved from one side of the room to another, while others took him around the city again. Peter spent a miserable afternoon in Crown Heights during a sleet storm, huddled under an awning without a coat. Someone took pity on him and bought him a coffee.

The only sure progress made was in recognizing the difference between long and short blips. Smaller jumps barely unsettled Peter at this point, often overlooked entirely except for the deja vu factor, while longer ones were accompanied by nausea and disorientation. Anything above a four hour jump left him woozy and in need of support for at least a few minutes after restabilizing.

Scott was midway through a rambling story about a pizza truck and his co-owners at X-Con Security Consultants when Peter blipped. As ever, the movement from one point in time to another felt instantaneous. One moment he was in the lab, the next he was stumbling into a crowd of people on a street he didn't recognize.

People jostled Peter back and forth before he managed to scramble his way out of the throng and into a side alley. His head spun and the remnants of his lunch threatened to come back up. Bracing both hands on the building in front of him, Peter leaned over and let his head hang limply. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the nausea to pass. It did, albeit slowly, and he managed not to upchuck anything in the process.

This had been a big jump. He could tell from the lingering effects of it and his unfamiliar surroundings. Only his two biggest blips had taken him to locations outside of New York and this made a third. Where and whenever he was, he was a long way from where he had started.

Peter stood slowly and pulled his hoodie closed over his chest. He was glad he'd taken to wearing at least one extra layer, it meant he wasn't _as_ cold as he would have been without it. Hood on and zipper drawn up to his chin, he stole back out onto the street, glancing around for some signage that might give him an idea of where he was.

One thing Peter had learned was that there wasn't much point to staying put when he blipped. Exploring, staying still, he'd go back eventually either way. If all he did was wait, the time disparity would just be hours wasted. Might as well _do_ something while he waited to be drawn back to the present.

Following the flow of the general crowd, Peter found himself approaching a hub of noise and activity. He popped up on his toes to peer over the people in front of him and glimpsed bright lights against the dark backdrop of the night sky. Crossing beneath an archway of wood and garlands, the street opened abruptly onto a crowded city center.

Peter stopped, startled by the onslaught of colors and carols. He found himself in a circle of open space surrounded by old buildings with modern shops on street level. Strings of lights had been hung from lampposts in a spiderweb overhead, the posts themselves wrapped in bright tinsel and streamers of blue and silver.

Vendors peddling hot drinks had set up on several corners, their little carts manned by red-nosed servers with smiling faces. There were tables and booths of holiday wares from carved ornaments to handmade candles. A fat Christmas tree had been set up at the dead center of the plaza, its boughs laden heavily with more ornaments than Peter had ever seen on a tree that wasn't over ten feet tall.

It reminded him of Union Square, but smaller and with less of the New York City buzz. This place felt homey. Still fast paced and energetic, like any city, but not overwhelmingly cramped the way New York was.

Peter ducked and weaved between happy couples and sprawling families, wandering the outer sidewalk surrounding the inner circle of festivities. This was a decidedly more pleasant outcome than showing up in an empty park or underneath a Venitian bridge. Maybe the universe was trying to apologize for his previous, much more disastrous blips. And it wasn't done, either.

With his eyes drifting across his surroundings, soaking in the holiday atmosphere, Peter did a double take. His heart leapt comically in his chest, bouncing around his ribcage like he'd swallowed a particularly excited frog. Before Peter could think better of it, he was reacting, cupping a hand around his mouth and raising his other arm in a wave as he called out;

"_Quin!_"

The first cry of his name didn't get a reaction, but having done it once already, Peter called out to him again. This time, Quin started and swiveled his head, looking for the source of his name before finding Peter through the crowd.

Their gazes met and it was him, _Quin_, but it also wasn't him. At a distance, the image of someone else flitted before Peter's eyes, there and gone too fast to catch. Something nagged at him, in the slope of Quin's shoulders and the stubble on his cheeks. Gone were his baggy clothes and lazily ruffled hair, this Quin swept his hair away from his face and wore fitted jeans. Even his parka was gone, replaced by a long coat with a high collar.

Peter realized too late that in the handful of days since he'd last seen him, Quin had lived years.

Suddenly, Peter wished he had better control of his impulses. All he wanted to do was turn and run as far as he could. But it was too late. Quin was making his way through the crowd towards him, sidestepping a stroller and slipping between giggling schoolgirls. Too soon, they were standing within a foot of one another.

"Fancy meeting you here, Peter."

It took a moment for him to unstick his voice from the back of his throat.

"Hey, Quin."

Quin smiled, but it lacked the cheerful edge Peter remembered. In fact, now that he was seeing him up close, there was something dulled about him. Like the shine had been scuffed off polished silver.

"Didn't think I'd ever see you again. You sort of..."

"Disappeared?" Peter offered, followed by a nervous laugh.

"Yeah."

The lack of accusation in Quin's voice should have been a relief, not the source of a new wellspring of guilt. Maybe it really hadn't had any impact on his life to have Peter gone before he woke up. It was possible that he'd held no expectations for him at all. But it felt as though he'd let Quin down.

"I'm sorry." Peter looked down. "I didn't- I mean I wasn't going to, but I- I sort of had to. It's hard to explain. I should've said goodbye."

"That would've been nice, yeah." Quin said. "But you didn't and now here we are."

"I'm sorry."

"Hey. What'd I tell you?"

It only occurred to Peter after he looked up and opened his mouth to speak that Quin was expecting him to remember something from who knew how many years ago. That it meant _Quin_ remembered what he'd said. And something about that notion, that he still featured in his memories, made Peter's heart flutter uncontrollably in his chest.

"That I'm not a burden."

"Exactly! So quit apologizing." Quin was smiling again. "So, what, you happen to be in the area? Back in town for the holidays?"

"Just passing through." Peter said, not untruthfully. "But I'm here for now."

"That you are."

There was a pregnant pause in which they both stood, looking at one another with smiles a little too fond for two people who had only met once before. Peter especially knew that being keen on Quin was stupid. They existed in two separate times, which he could never explain to him, and he was unlikely to ever be around long enough for a real friendship to form.

Yet, despite that depressing reality, Peter felt drawn to Quin in a way that made him selfish enough to steal whatever moments he could. At least then he'd have a few good memories to fall back on as he disintegrated out of existence for the second time in his life.

"I was just gonna have a look around, you wanna maybe walk with me?" he offered, hopeful.

And Quin, with far less hesitation than Peter was expecting, said; "Yeah."

They started by walking the outer rim of the plaza, looking into warmly lit shop windows and critiquing their choice of decorations. Quin was a font of pithy commentary that had Peter in stitches before they'd gone more than ten yards from where they'd started. He kept up a rolling drone of dry wit through the whole circuit, often at the cost of disapproving looks from elderly couples shuffling by.

Quin guided them through the crowd into the hubbub of holiday activity with a hand between Peter's shoulder blades. There was no set path to follow, so they bobbed and weaved where gaps formed between people and glanced around at the merriment where they could.

Peter hadn't noticed himself beginning to shiver, but Quin had, and dragged them over to a vendor selling hot apple cider. The white paper cups didn't come with lids, which made it treacherous to sip the scalding cider while walking, but they tried anyway. It was sweet, spiced, and warmed Peter all the way through.

They had to stop eventually, one too many close encounters between their mostly-filled cups and the front of their jackets making stillness a necessity. They retreated to the outer sidewalk and leaned against a building, shoulders touching as the sipped their drinks.

It had been maybe an hour, but Peter felt lighter than he had in months. When he was with Quin, everything about the life waiting for him in the present slipped away. Just like the night they spent drinking cocoa and building the Falcon, there was a sense of encapsulated happiness to this experience.

Except that as he glanced over at Quin, Peter couldn't help noticing that he looked more than a little worn around the edges. He'd noticed, as they walked through the cheerful throng, that the light never quite reached Quin's eyes anymore. The way he smiled was different, almost bland, and he walked with slumped shoulders.

Up close, it was worse. There were circles under his eyes that spoke to exhaustion and lines on his face that hadn't been there when they first met. His stubble was getting long and the shadow of a frown lingered around his mouth. Quin looked thinner, too. He looked like a man who was struggling to keep himself in one piece and trying desperately not to let it show.

The silence between them suddenly felt heavy. Peter struggled to dismiss his observations, wanting to sink back into his comfortable little bubble, but he couldn't. Desperate to fill the silence, Peter said the first thing to come to mind.

"I meant to ask earlier, how's your mom?"

As soon as he spoke, Peter wished he hadn't.

All the light in Quin went out, like a candle being snuffed. Hell, Peter hadn't even realized there _was_ any warmth left in him, but there had to have been because it was just _gone _now. Everything about him went cold and empty.

Peter knew what was coming. He knew before Quin even forced his jaw open to speak.

"She died last year. Cancer."

It felt like someone punched him in the lungs.

He'd met Henrietta just days ago. She had been alive, cheerful. Cooked dinner for them and scolded her rambunctious son, but talked proudly about expecting his acceptance letter to M.I.T. And for Quin, who had so obviously loved his mother more than anything in the world, she'd been gone for a _year_.

Peter tried to make sense of this information, but his mind wasn't cooperating. How could she be gone? He'd _just_ seen her, blowing them a kiss on her way to bed, perfectly fine. Henrietta hadn't been sick, or weak, or shown any sign of being in distress.

Or maybe she had been. Perhaps she'd been sick all along, but hadn't shared as much with her son. It seemed like the kind of thing she might do. And Quin couldn't have known, because somehow Peter was sure that he would have been walking her home that night instead of finding strange, crying boys if he had.

What had been days for Peter had been years for Quin, and when his mother died she took a piece of him with her.

"Quin I- I'm so s-"

"You didn't know." Quin interrupted. "You couldn't have known."

It wasn't an accusation, but it _sounded_ like one. Like Peter wasn't there and he should have been, because maybe if he was, Quin wouldn't be walking around without a heartbeat.

Peter reached out and gripped Quin's arm, fingertips pressed to the inside of his wrist. Quin looked down at his hand, then up at Peter. God, his eyes used to be so bright. They were big and blue and sparkled like sunlight on the ocean, and now they were blank gray.

"I'm sorry." he said. "I'm _sorry_, Quin."

The words "I understand" and "I've lost people too" were heavy on his tongue, but Peter couldn't find the strength to say them. Whatever pain Quin felt was unique to him, a burden that only he could comprehend. Even if they shared the experience of loss, the aftermath was individual.

Quin held Peter's gaze, unmoving and silent. He could have been a statue, if it weren't for his chest when he breathed. Eventually, he looked away, ducking his head as he dumped the remainder of his cider onto the pavement.

"Come on, let's go." he said, and didn't wait to be followed back into the rabble.

Peter hastened to copy him, tossing his cup into the same nearby trashcan as he darted after Quin's back.

Going back to the crowd of holiday merrymakers felt like stepping from an ice bath into a sauna. The press of bodies was too much, their voices too loud, their very presence a cloying weight on Peter's being. Quin walked ahead of him, separate but close enough to glance back every so often to be sure Peter was still there. Those quick looks were the only thing keeping Peter from leaving.

No more sightseeing was done. They walked a circle around the plaza for no reason besides _doing_ something, mingling with the crowd for the sake of anonymity rather than shared enjoyment. Quin walked fast and left it up to Peter to keep pace, which he did, until finally they began to slow down.

They found a break in the throng surrounding the Christmas tree and slid into the gap, claiming the space for themselves. A waist-high fence had been erected around the tree, keeping them several feet from its glittering boughs. Even so, the fairy-lights cast a glow on Quin's skin, lighting the warmer honeyed tones in his hair.

Objectively, he looked handsome. Festivity suited him the same way certain color palettes looked better on certain people. If he had been the Quin that Peter met first, he would have blended seamlessly into the backdrop like someone had painted him in. But this empty Quentin, he stared up at the tree and its lights like if he looked long enough, maybe it would fill him up again.

"She used to drag me here every year." he said. Peter didn't need to ask to know he was talking about his mother. "She loved all the decorations, all the people. Sometimes we'd spend an hour just walking around the tree, pointing out the ornaments we liked."

Quin laughed, but without any actual laughter. He just shook, a dusty breath wheezing from between his teeth.

"I told her once that I thought it was weird, since we didn't even celebrate Christmas, but she didn't care. It made her happy. All this... made her really happy."

Peter stepped closer, brushing their shoulders together. When Quin didn't shy away, he boldly leaned into him, resting his weight against his side in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.

"We didn't get to come last year. She was- She couldn't-" A shuddering noise left Quin. He pressed back against Peter. "I don't know why I'm here."

Peter thought he knew what a broken heart felt like. Calling things off with MJ barely a month after confessing to her had killed a part of him, even if it had been for the best. Peter thought that that was heartbreak, but he had been wrong.

_This_ was the feeling of his heart breaking. Helplessness and anguish as he watched someone he cared for gut themselves, and there was nothing he could do to help.

Of all the things he wanted to say, not one felt good enough to voice aloud. Instead of trying to cobble together words that would ultimately mean nothing, Peter reached for Quin. He took his hand, just like he had the night they met, only this time he was the one who held on first.

Slowly, Quin's fingers curled around his.

They walked away from the tree, away from the crowd, back to the sidewalk. Somewhere, the music over the plaza had changed to old Christmas songs rather than carols. Peter kept their hands held loosely between them, tethered together, but only just.

Though Peter was still unfamiliar with his surroundings, Quin seemed to know where he was going. Their trajectory had them headed towards one of the decorated archways out into the rest of the city, which led who knew where.

"You can call me Quentin."

"Huh?"

"My name." he clarified. "You're still calling me Quin."

A faint tingle along his spider-senses raised the hair on the back of Peter's neck. Something a little like panic began to tick inside his skull.

"Quentin?"

"That's me." he sighed. "Quentin Beck."

The bottom fell out of the world. The bubble popped.

Suddenly, Peter was as alien as he ought to be in a time that wasn't his.

And he could _see it_ now. What had been nagging at him since he laid eyes on Quin again, the familiarity he couldn't place. It had been missing before, he'd been too young when they met, but the addition of years and scruff changed him.

If Peter filled in his beard and added time to the lines of his face, gave him two additional inches of height and bulked him out with more muscle... He was Quentin Beck. The same Quentin Beck who would one day become Mysterio and betray Peter's trust. The same Quentin Beck with hundreds of lives on his conscience and motives Peter couldn't begin to comprehend.

And he was holding his _fucking_ hand.

Only he wasn't, he was holding Quin's hand. Quin who was Beck, but not yet, not in the ways that mattered. This wasn't the man who had walked Peter in front of a train and watched it hit him. He was a grieving son, alone in an ocean of people. The same young man who shared cookies and made cocoa. The one who took Peter's hand when he was at his lowest and led him away from it all.

They were the same person as much as they couldn't be. Beck and Quin. Quin and Beck. Quentin Beck and Mysterio.

It didn't make sense.

Peter was so busy trying to grapple with his new reality that he missed Quin pausing beneath the archway. He bumped into him lightly and halted, blinking himself rapidly back into focus. It wasn't Beck standing in front of him.

Quin was looking up. Peter, busy staring at him, almost missed it when he said;

"Mistletoe."

"What?" Peter said dumbly, then jerked his head up.

Sure enough, the archway was hung with several boughs of mistletoe, spaced in intervals from one end to the other. Without meaning to, they had walked right beneath one.

"Oh." he said, then tried to laugh it off. It came out thready and nervous. "That's..."

Quin hummed.

His voice wasn't even right! Beck's voice was deeper, which made sense when Peter considered the age difference between the person in front of him and the man he'd met. Still, nothing about Quin rang true with what Peter knew about Beck. He'd accuse them of being different people if it weren't for the fact that Quin looked just like him, sans a decade or two.

Quin let go of his hand. Peter missed it immediately.

What he meant to do was say something, anything, maybe ask if Quin had been considering a career as a criminal lately, but that didn't happen. Peter's voice died before it ever made it to his tongue, because Quin's fingers were under his chin. He was tilting his head up.

Quin kissed him. There, under the mistletoe, Quentin Beck pressed a lingering kiss to Peter's lips. The kiss was chaste, warm, and lasted an eternity while also ending in a second.

When Quin pulled back, he did so slowly. His gaze flicked over Peter's face, taking in his wide eyes and parted lips. The hand on his chin disappeared, leaving Peter bereft of all contact and so much colder without it.

Quentin Beck had kissed him. _Quentin Beck had kissed him_.

Peter wanted to feel disgust, anger, but all he could think about was how gently Quentin had moved his head and how tenderly he had kissed him. That he had done it with such intention, rather than just pecking him quickly, like he _wanted_ to be kissing him. And wasn't that a thought; that Quin wanted to kiss _him_.

Before he could find his voice again, Quentin smiled. It didn't fit his face, all hard at the edges and paired with empty blue eyes.

He stepped back, away from Peter.

"It was good to see you again, Peter."

And then Quentin turned around and walked away, leaving Peter standing beneath the mistletoe alone. He watched him go, caught between running after him and running away.

In the end, he didn't move.


	4. Part 3

Peter returned to Dr. Pym's lab more disoriented than when he arrived in the past, and for entirely different reasons. As before, the Pym-Van Dyne's were quick to ask for details about where he had gone and what had happened, which he gave without much thought. He told them about the city streets, the plaza all kitted out in its holiday best and let them try to parse together where and when he'd gone.

But he kept his time with Quin to himself.

* * *

The next major blip landed him in New York. Even before the now-familiar dizziness wore off, Peter knew where he was.

Manhattan was the same lively, sprawling labyrinth of concrete and metal in the past as it was in the present day. Landmarks jumped out at him from the city skyline; the Chrysler Building, the Empire State, huge cranes stacked precariously atop unfinished buildings. Taxi horns honked, people talked loudly, and not far from him there was a Nuts-4-Nuts cart selling honey-roasted peanuts. It smelled incredible, just like always.

Here, Peter knew how to blend in. He stepped away from the curb and into the stream of people, matching his pace to whoever was in front of him. With no destination in mind, Peter wandered and took stock of his surroundings.

It was daytime, which was a first for a jump this big. Cold sunlight shone down on the thriving city from a cloudless sky, doing little to amend the chill in the air. Whenever he was, it was still winter. Salvation Army volunteers rang their little bells beside cash collection buckets, encouraging people to share their wealth.

Everywhere Peter looked, from shop windows to billboards, the Avengers were looking back at him. Their symbols had been sprayed onto buildings, murals painted where advertisements were usually posted. People wore hats and scarves in Iron Man red and Captain America blue, and one little girl he passed had a Hulk mask covering her face.

For the first time, Peter had a good idea of when he was. The Avengers craze had hit the city right after the Battle of New York in 2012, which he remembered because he'd lived through it too. The chaos hadn't reached Queens, admittedly, but the aftershocks of the battle were felt all across the city. And for years to come.

It felt good to get lost in the fast-moving throng. Peter let his feet carry him down busy avenues and around sharp corners, ambivalent to his destination. Here, in a city still recovering from its first Avengers level threat, there was nothing for him to do but exist. Avengers Tower stood tall and proud in the distance, hosting at least a few of its founding members inside. Everything felt safe.

Peter tilted his head back and looked up at the clear blue sky.

Everything used to be so simple. He knew it sounded silly, like he was an old man looking back on decades gone, but that was how he felt. Before his powers, before civil wars and outer space, the world had been easier to understand. The Avengers protected them and so, they the common people were safe. It was just that easy.

No one besides Peter knew what was coming. The wars, the Snap, the five year loss. Sometimes, he had trouble remembering his age. He should be in his early twenties, but he wasn't, but he _was_. He had fought, died, come back to fight again, and watched the pillars of this new society built atop the Avengers fall.

Which brought his mind all the way back to Quentin Beck.

The last few days had left Peter well and truly sick of the ghost in his head. Whatever scant healing he'd done from his battle with Mysterio was swiftly and brutally undone. Every wound gaped open, fresh and impossible to avoid. He had been agitated and snappish, which he really needed to apologize for when he got back. The Pym-Van Dyne's probably put it down to the stress of what he was going through, but he still felt guilty.

Connecting Quin to Beck was like trying to fit a square into a circle. The man haunting his memories had the same face as Quin, but nothing else in common with him. Finding threads to tie the younger man to the person he'd become consumed Peter and left him with one thought in mind;

He didn't know all that much about Quentin Beck after all.

It had been a jarring realization. Though their partnership had been brief, Peter felt like he knew Beck fairly well at first. Even after his betrayal, it had never occurred to Peter that the man was just as much of a mystery as when he first appeared in Venice. Yet, he was.

All Peter really knew about Quentin Beck was that he had the brains and charisma to pull off a world-wide con so intricate, he would have gotten away with it if not for one lost drone. The life story he had spun for S.H.I.E.L.D could have been another fabrication, or littered with tidbits of the truth. Even now, Peter wasn't sure. He didn't know a damn thing about Beck's life before he'd followed the path of villainy to become Mysterio.

Except that once, he had been Quin, apparently. But then, how had Quin become _Beck_? They stood on two opposing sides of a spectrum in Peter's mind, with no middle ground between them. If they were truly the same person, what had turned the boy who made him cocoa into the man who walked him in front of that train? What cause could _possibly_ have the end effect of Beck holding a gun to his head and dying right in front of him?

In the end, that was what stopped his thoughts cold every time. Beck, Quin, whoever he had been on the suspension bridge, he was dead. Nothing was to be gained from overthinking his motivations or considering where his promising young life went so wrong. Even if Peter had wanted to change the past, which he _didn't_, it wasn't like he could somehow save Quin from who he'd become. Beck was dead. His story was over.

Peter sighed.

What a pointless train of thought it was, always going around in circles. None of it mattered anyway, because after two run-ins with Quin, he had exhausted his coincidental meetings. A third time would create a pattern, which would mean something, and the universe couldn't have a sense of humor _that_ sick.

And so naturally, when Peter glanced across the street, he saw Quentin Beck walking out of a high end liquor store.

His life was a comedy of errors.

Quentin wasn't alone. A group of people spilled out of the store after him, knocking his shoulders and nudging him playfully as they gathered together on the sidewalk. Lanyards hung from each of their necks and their ages varied drastically. If Peter had to guess, they were Quentin's coworkers.

Any apprehension Peter felt for running into him a third time disappeared when Quentin laughed. There was more of Beck in him now, in the last few inches he'd grown and the way he carried himself, but his laughter still belonged to Quin. It was loud and genuine, even from afar.

Peter stood rooted to the pavement, watching as Quentin turned on his heel to walk backwards down the street, heavy plastic bags swinging from either hand. He looked lighter now, as though some of his shine had come back as the hollow place inside him filled.

The plan, if there was one at all, which there probably wasn't, had only been to watch as Quentin walked away. Observe from afar without interacting again, it seemed the safest thing to do. But the universe had other plans, because Quentin turned his head and caught sight of Peter across the street.

Their eyes met and Peter saw Quentin's grow wide.

He could run. It wouldn't be hard for him to slip away, he knew the city well enough to disappear long before Quentin reached him. To what end, though? He'd already been spotted.

Quentin pushed the bags of booze into one of his coworker's arms, mouth forming an apology even as he started towards the street.

Peter met him on the corner, but certainly not because he was eager to see him. He didn't feel like prolonging the inevitable, that was all.

"We meet again, Peter." Quentin said, casting his gaze appraisingly over him. "You look... good."

_So do you_, Peter thought, because he _did_.

The shadow that hovered over him after his mother's death had lifted. He looked confident and wild, eyes glittering and smile even more mischievous than Peter remembered it. Cheekiness suited the curve of Quentin's mouth far more than whatever imitation of joy had been there before.

More had changed about him than had stayed the same. The stubble was gone, leaving his face clean, and he had cut his hair short. The last of the youthful curves had left his face, now he was all attractive angles and lines. In the span of their meetings, Quin had gone from a teenager to a man.

Peter, on the other hand, hadn't changed.

He looked down at himself, taking inventory of the image he made. There was no excuse or rational explanation for his utterly unchanged appearance. Aside from his clothes, he looked like the same Peter that Quentin had met years ago. ( Because he was, of course, but he couldn't say that. )

"I... can't really explain." he said lamely. "But it's good to see you again."

To his surprise, Quentin tipped his head back and laughed. The giddiness in his laughter was almost visceral, it stuck in Peter's ears and quickened the tempo of his heartbeat.

Quentin's smile was blinding.

"Oh hell, _aliens_ are real- And _gods_! What's so weird about a kid who doesn't age, eh?"

He clapped a hand on Peter's bicep and squeezed gently, still smiling at him like it really was that easy to explain away. Maybe it was. In 2012, people had learned to quickly accept whatever reality was handed to them, or get lost in the sudden influx of change the world was going through.

Peter's smile must have been as relieved as he felt, because Quentin squeezed his arm again before letting go.

"You sure know how to roll with the punches, Quin." he snorted.

"Gotta adapt to keep up." Quentin shrugged. "World's changing fast."

"Tell me about it."

This kept happening to them, the fond silences where they both just looked at each other and seemed happy doing that. Maybe that meant something. Peter didn't want to think about it.

"It really is good to see you." Peter said. "You look... You look happier."

Quentin ducked his head with a half-laugh that may have been embarrassed.

"Yeah, uh- I may not have been at my best, last you saw me."

"I mean, I get _why_."

"Look, I'm sorry for-"

"It's okay." Peter interrupted.

The apology could have been for anything; his shift in mood after his mother was mentioned, that he'd walked away, or the fact that he'd kissed Peter before he did.

( Was he really saying that it was _okay_ that Quentin Beck had kissed him? )

"Yeah?" Quentin said.

"Yeah." Peter affirmed. "I'm glad I was there."

A statement which, once he'd said it, was startlingly true. Being vibrated through time and possibly out of existence may be terrifying, and inconvenient, but he was happy to have been there for Quin. He couldn't imagine how it would have been if he were alone, looking around at the plaza his mother had loved without anyone there to lean on.

"Speaking of places you've been, where _have_ you been?" Quentin asked, arching a brow.

Peter fumbled for an answer and landed on a half-truth.

"Here in New York, mainly."

"And we're only running into each other now?"

"I said _mainly_."

Quentin cocked his head back and narrowed his eyes, amused smile playing around his mouth.

"You're just one mystery after another, aren't you Peter?"

"Would you believe I'm usually pretty straightforward?" Peter laughed. "What about you? What brings you to New York?"

The smile on Quentin's face became a lopsided, wolfish grin. He tugged at his lanyard, holding up the ID card so the company name on the front was visible.

"I," he began proudly. "Landed the job of a _lifetime_."

Peter read the badge. Then, he read it again to be sure he wasn't seeing things. The train of thought dedicated to Quentin Beck abruptly derailed, careening off in a new direction.

"_Stark Industries?_"

"Yep." Quentin said, popping the 'p'. "The one and only."

From across the street, someone hollered; "_Beck!_"

Quentin turned, gesturing to whoever had called for him and missed the stunned look on Peter's face.

Stark Industries.

Quentin Beck had worked for Stark Industries.

And although he hadn't given Peter his job title, it was obvious that Quentin wasn't some low-level paperpusher. No, with his intellect and penchant for augmented reality technology, he would be making waves. Mr. Stark would never let a mind like his go to waste, not when he could be giving him the tools to create something incredible instead.

Which begged a question that Peter hadn't considered before; where _had_ the initial drones Beck was using come from? It wasn't something he'd thought about until now. Suddenly, the question answered itself, because he was immediately sure that the technology had come from Beck himself.

From the get-go, it had been obvious Beck was smart, but _this_ smart? Peter had seen his work in action, gone up against it, and it was as incredible as it was terrifying. Just like this revelation was proving to be.

This could mean so many things, most of which Peter wasn't in a position to properly process. Had Beck worked with Mr. Stark? Had they _known_ each other? They must have, because Beck had known about E.D.I.T.H and its functions. If that was the case, though, when had he gone rogue? Had he been there when Peter started his internship? Had he worked there even when he became Mysterio?

Quentin turned back, his grin blindsiding Peter even though he'd seen it just moments before. There were so many new things to think about and absolutely none of them seemed as important as the fact that Quentin kept smiling at him like he didn't know what else to do when he looked at him.

"Look, Peter, I've gotta jet. There's an office party..."

"Oh, yeah, no, I get it!" Peter said a little too quickly.

"I'd really love to chat more, but-"

"No, no! You're-"

They stopped, then shared a sheepish laugh.

"Hey," Quentin said lowly. "Stick around this time, would you?"

Those words shifted something between them. Peter wasn't sure what it was, or in which direction it had moved, only that it made his chest feel like it was full of birds, beating their wings against his ribs.

"Quin..."

Another call of '_Beck!_' echoed from across the street.

"We can meet here tomorrow." Quentin's hand found its way back to Peter's arm, his touch sliding down until he could grip his wrist. "Say, about four? We can get coffee, catch up."

Unspoken words hung in the air.

Peter opened his mouth, then shut it again.

He had never tried to stop a blip before. By all accounts, he wasn't convinced it was even possible. The vibrations causing his jumps seemed to come and go at random without any concern for his input.

Making promises to a dead man in a time long past was the kind of thing Dr. Pym would definitely advise against. Peter knew better.

What he heard himself say was;

"Yeah... Yeah, I'll try, okay?"

Quentin squeezed his wrist. Twice.

"I'll wait for you." he promised.

For a moment, Peter thought he might lean in and kiss him again.

Instead, his hand drifted down, fingertips brushing over Peter's palm before he slipped away. Quentin stepped backwards, smiling at him, before turning and jogging between cars to the other side of the street. His coworkers looked more amused by him than annoyed, once he rejoined them.

He cast another look over his shoulder as they started down the street, his smile softer as he caught Peter's eye one last time.

The birds in Peter's chest had multiplied.

* * *

Of course, the universe liked to use Peter's life as a sounding board for all its worst jokes, so he never made it to 4PM the next day. The containment cell in Dr. Pym's lab was beginning to feel less like a safety precaution and more like a detention center. Somewhere he went in between jumps, where all he could do was anticipate what came next.

And because the world truly was just laughing at his expense, the first person Peter saw upon returning to the present day was Nick Fury standing outside the glass cell wall.

Not alone, either. There was a whole team of S.H.I.E.L.D agents in Dr. Pym's lab, making notes on tablets and talking in hand-signals amongst themselves. One particularly bold pair kept trying to co-opt the seats at the observation terminal from Hope and Janet, which wasn't working. Scott, meanwhile, had positioned himself squarely in front of the door to Peter's room.

Dr. Pym seemed to be midway through giving Fury a proper dressing-down when he noticed Peter returning from his jump.

"Oh not _you_." Peter groaned.

"Me." Fury said, single eye narrowing. "I see your attitude hasn't improved any, Parker."

"Peter!" Scott grinned, clearly relieved.

"You've been gone for two days." Dr. Pym said brusquely. "And _you_-"

"Imagine my surprise," Fury interrupted. "When I hear that Spiderman hasn't been seen in New York City for almost two damn weeks. And when I try to reach out, what do I find but Dr. Hank Pym. Set up shop right in the middle of Brooklyn."

Peter scowled and so did Hope.

"My father was cleared of all charges, Director Fury. He can operate his lab wherever he wants."

"Not without good reason he can't. Which brings me back to my point; when exactly were you going to inform me that one of the Avengers was _temporally challenged_?"

"The situation is under control." Janet said, resting a hand on her husband's back. Dr. Pym's jaw was clenched so tight he was all but shaking with anger.

"Oh, is it? Because I've been sitting here for almost forty-eight hours watching you three do jack shit while this kid was getting up to God knows what in another time period!"

"Hey-!" Scott started forward.

"And don't get me started on you, Lang. What are you even doing here?"

"I'm here for Peter."

"If your goons would stop getting in our way we could have learned more during that jump!" Hope snapped. "Do any of them even have clearance to be here?!"

"They go where I _say_ they go, Ms. Van Dyne. Including into labs being run illegally on city-owned property."

"Yeah, so we don't have a parking permit, fine us." Scott retorted. "But barging in here with a bunch of G.I. Joe wannabes is totally unnecessary!"

"S.H.I.E.L.D will now be overseeing this operation." Fury announced, as if Scott hadn't spoken. "And believe me, Dr. Pym, if your lab wasn't uniquely equipped for this situation I'd be taking Parker off your hands entirely."

"Hah!" Dr. Pym barked. "I'd like to see you military jackasses _try_ to understand the intricacies of quantum mechanics! This is my lab, Fury, and Peter Parker is my responsibility. You're not putting a finger on him as long as he's in that unit!"

Several S.H.I.E.L.D agents moved towards the glass door at once, but Scott and Hope were faster. He backed himself up against the door and she keyed a code into a pad, sealing a lock with a definitive beep-whir-_click_ of machinery.

Fury glowered.

"You four have been sitting around letting this kid pop in and out of time like he's got a season pass to Disneyland, and you don't see anything wrong with that? Let me remind you-"

"Would you shut the _fuck_ up?"

Everyone stopped talking and looked at Peter.

"You want to say that again, Parker?" Fury asked, voice dangerous.

"Yeah, I said _shut the fuck up_." Peter repeated, stepping up to the glass. "It was my call not to contact you. _I_ was the one who said I didn't want to deal with S.H.I.E.L.D and you've got no right to come in here and harass Dr. Pym and his family because I hurt your _feelings _by not including you."

If looks could kill, Peter would be dead. Fury was glaring murder at him, nostils flared, but he didn't care. He was so angry he was shaking, fists clenched tight enough at his sides that they hurt.

"Do you think this is some rewards program you can opt out of, Parker? You're an Avenger, which makes you not only my problem, but my responsibility. My _feelings_ on the matter are that one of my people is endangering not only his own damn self, but the entire fucking timeline, and doesn't think that's relevant to tell me!"

Something in Peter snapped.

"If I'm "one of your people" and that makes me _so_ important, then what was London?! Or Prague, or Venice?! You don't get to stand there and act like you actually care about me when you put me in the line of fire!"

"You're an Avenger-"

"And I've been to space, yeah, so _what_?! You want me to believe there really wasn't anyone else in the entire world you could have called?! What about Mr. Scott?!" Peter gestured violently. "Or Ms. Van Dyne?! Or White Wolf, or Falcon, or literally _anyone else_?! You said it yourself, I wasn't equipped for the mission! But you still forced me to do it, even though I told you I didn't want to and you _said_ you _understood_! You just went ahead and manipulated stuff to work out the way you wanted!"

Anger tasted like blood on his tongue. He was so tired, so fed up with being treated like a child and expected to act like an adult. Hero one second, fuck up the next, and always at fault.

"You didn't even _trust_ Beck! You knew he was up to something and you still sent me out there with him _alone_, Fury! Did it ever occur to you to warn me that you didn't trust him? That maybe, as the person actually standing next to him, that might be important for me to know?! No! Of course not! Because I'm _just_ Spiderman and I'm _just_ a kid and yet, when it all went sideways, you made _me_ clean up _your_ mess!"

Peter spun away, abruptly stalking to the far wall, just to burn off some of the feeling building inside him. He felt like he might combust, just go up in flames suddenly and without an ignition point. Everything was _too much_.

He turned back maybe five seconds later to find the entire lab outside his containment unit in different positions. Scott still hovered by the door, but everyone else had distinctly moved.

"...How long was I gone?" he asked, voice raw at the edges from yelling.

"An hour." Scott replied quietly.

Peter turned away again, this time so no one would see the angry tears pebbling at the corners of his eyes.


	5. Part 4

Central Park greeted Peter by depositing him in a knee-high snowbank. Powdery snowflakes clung to his jeans as he stepped out onto the paved walkway. Bright street lamps glowed on either side of the path, directing him back down a rolling slope in one direction and around a bend in the other.

How far backwards had he blipped this time? It had to be a backwards jump, they were the only ones that felt like anything anymore.

The vibrations were getting worse. Peter knew it, even though no one seemed willing to tell him as much. As his quantum frequency destabilized more and more often, stepping in and out of time became as seamless as moving between rooms. Jumping forward felt like blinking, utterly unnoticeable if it weren't for the reactions of the lab outside.

Dr. Pym had taken to asking him for the date at random intervals. Peter didn't remember anymore, he'd stopped trying to keep track. Minutes went by in hours, days went by in minutes, hours went by in days. Time had become incomprehensible.

This was the first blip to feel significantly different since he'd been to 2012. The nausea was long gone, dizziness too. He had been unsteady on his feet for a few seconds, felt lightheaded, then fine. How long, Peter wondered, until jumping back years felt like nothing at all?

And how long after that until he became dust scattered through time?

Choosing between right or left was the easiest decision Peter had made recently, mostly because his choice felt inconsequential. A pattern had emerged in his blips, one that the Pym-Van Dyne's weren't tracking because he still hadn't told them about it. But it was there and he knew, deep in his gut, that the pattern would hold.

Peter chose to go left, walking round the curve in the road with his hands in his coat pockets.

He wasn't surprised to see Quentin Beck. Admittedly, he was a little startled to find him kicking the life out of a snowman, but he wasn't surprised to see him.

The years had been good to Quentin. Even driven to disarray by his fury, he cut an attractive image. There was more bulk to him, a broader chest and wider shoulders. Both his suit and coat were tailored to his figure, done in rich blues and grays that must bring out his eyes.

The snowman crumbled, leaving Quentin with nowhere to redirect his anger. Clouds of steam formed before him with each heaving breath, his whole body held so tense he was quivering. In the half-shadows he looked sharper, hungrier.

Peter approached slowly. For the first time since meeting Quin, his spider-senses were trying to forewarn him of impending danger. Of course they were. With a few more years and self-discipline to match that anger, it could have been Beck standing in front of him.

But it wasn't. Not yet.

"Hey Quin."

Quentin whirled to face him, eyes wild pools of icy blue almost devoid of pupil. He had the look of a starved animal, jagged and just one step from unhinged.

"_You!_" Quentin snarled, lips peeling back from his teeth. Peter had never noticed how sharp his canines were before.

The instinct to flee grappled with an urge to run up to him and demand to know where the impish boy he knew had gone. Peter came to a stop, close enough to see the tears on Quentin's cheek and the angry flush beneath them, but far enough to be out of arm's reach.

"Back to haunt me again, are you?"

Before he could reply, Quentin barked a hollow laugh.

"Of course you are! You always _do_!"

"I'm not a ghost, Quin." Peter frowned.

Another laugh echoed from between sharp teeth, this one bordering on hysterical.

"No, you're a fucking nightmare." Quentin's face twisted into a sneer. "Always with that stupid fucking nickname, showing up when I've _finally_ stopped thinking about you!"

_I could say the same_, Peter thought.

He risked a step forward, but Quentin reared back from him as though he were brandishing a weapon.

"You stay _away_ from me."

"No." Peter replied, frown deepening. "You can't expect me to walk away when you're upset, Quin."

"Why not? All you ever do is _leave_."

The accusation stung. It must have shown on his face, because Quentin's mouth curled at the edges with satisfaction. His spider-senses were a siren warbling in the back of his mind, chanting _Beck, Beck, Beck_ until his ears rang.

"I never left because I wanted to."

"Have you ever actually tried to _stay_?"

Peter wanted to say yes, he really did, for the sake of the Quentin he met last if nothing else. His silence seemed to speak for him.

It wasn't that simple. Trying to stay in the past and wanting to were two separate things, neither of which he could find the words to explain. He had _wanted_ to stay with Quin and Henrietta in their narrow house, and he had _wanted_ to meet Quentin on the street corner in Manhattan and get coffee. But had he tried?

No, of course not, because he belonged in the present no matter what he wished otherwise.

"You're unbelievable." Quentin said derisively.

"_I'm_ not the one kicking the shit out of a snowman." Peter snapped without thinking, his own temper beginning to flare.

Eyes flashing, Quentin snarled; "Fuck _off_."

He turned away from Peter and began walking, taking long strides to put as much distance between them as he could. Peter followed, quickening his own steps to keep up.

It would be easy to just let him walk away. Maybe even the wiser thing to do in this situation. There was no reason Peter couldn't just let Quentin Beck disappear into the night and never see him again. None of this was his responsibility, not Quin's pain or Quentin's expectations. He could walk away.

Could, but _wouldn't_. Peter had faced Beck when he was ruled by his rage, Quentin was almost his spitting image. The difference between them was that when Quentin spat venom and hissed viritol, he did so with pain in his eyes.

If Peter walked away, their paths would cease to cross, he just knew it.

So he followed.

"Are you deaf?! I said _fuck off_, Peter!"

"No."

"I finally _want _you to leave and now you won't?!" Empty laughter. "You're _something else_, you bastard."

"Calling me names isn't going to make me go away."

As if taking this to be a challenge, Quentin wrenched a clump of frozen snow off a bench as he passed and turned to hurl it directly at Peter's head.

Peter dodged easily, which seemed only to incense Quentin further. He veered sharply and stomped off the path, into the snow and away from the cool lamplight.

The broad expanse of his retreating back made a perfect target for a well-aimed snowball.

Quentin froze on impact. He turned, slowly, and for a moment Peter could see emotions warring inside him. Sorrow and fury, hatred and surprise, pain and confusion. He settled on rage.

Peter ducked beneath the hard ball of snow that came flying at him, impacting with far too much force on a nearby lamppost. The snow had been packed too tightly, with the intent to harm, but he didn't care. Beck had held a gun to his head. This was nothing.

The next snowball went by his ear, then another flew past his right side. As Peter weaved away from the incoming projectiles, he scooped up his own snow and packed it into a looser ball, flinging it back at Quentin.

His struck, smacking into the enraged man's chest.

Snowball fights were the stuff of childhood, a play-battle between friends. This one felt more like going toe to toe with a supervillain, only fractionally less deadly.

_Fractionally_.

Quentin's aim improved with each throw, leading Peter to more and more complex maneuvers to avoid being hit. He ran, leapt, ducked, rolled, jumped over logs and wove between trees. Returning fire quickly became less important than evading the onslaught.

All it took was one poorly executed feint to remind him why he needed to pay attention to his surroundings as well as his opponents. His foot sank deeper than he expected, unbalancing him, and he went toppling over into a snowbank with a yelp of surprise. Peter emerged sputtering and shaking his head, vision clouded by snow, and Quentin _laughed_.

It was possibly the best sound Peter had ever heard.

The tone of their game changed. A volley of snowballs flew through the air from either side, targeted at first, then flung hastily and without much regard for how far they went or where they landed. Snowballs became handfuls of powder, which did nothing but fill the air with flurries of snow.

Peter wasn't sure how long they kept at it. By the time they stopped his hands were numb and his jeans were soaked from the knees down. They stood there catching their breath, faces rosy and coats dusted with white. Quentin looked especially worn, but he wasn't looking at Peter like he wanted to strangle him anymore either.

The droning whine of his spider-senses had gone quiet. Peter sighed.

"Do you want to talk about it now?"

Quentin swallowed and rubbed the back of his hand against the frozen tear tracks on his face.

"Yeah." he said thickly. "Yeah."

The night was still and silent save for the sound of their feet crunching through the snow as they trudged back towards the walkway. They found a dry bench beneath a streetlamp and settled on it, close enough their knees brushed. Quentin stared sightlessly into the distance, wringing his hands together for warmth or from nerves. Peter knocked their legs together more firmly and waited.

For a while, Quentin was quiet, gathering his thoughts. When he was ready, he opened his mouth and told a story Peter could have never anticipated.

Having spent his life idolizing Tony Stark, Peter knew most technologies Stark Industries had produced in his lifetime. Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing wasn't new to him. It was one of those technologies that Peter rarely thought about, having considered it neither the best of, nor worst of, Stark Industries' productions.

Some of that probably had to do with Spiderman's nearly concurrent debut during the fight that left Captain America a fugitive. Peter hadn't really had time to delve into B.A.R.F, too busy fighting Avengers and scrambling to keep up with Tony Stark himself. He'd forgotten about it, mostly.

Before there was Binarily Augmented Retro-Fitting, there had been Augmented Reality Imaging, and Quentin Beck had designed it.

He told Peter everything, starting back in his junior days at Stark Industries, when he worked tirelessly to get A.R.I considered for development. There had been hoop after hoop to jump through, countless hours spent trying to prove that advanced augmented reality on a large scale was possible, imminent, even. Back then, CGI had only just passed the uncanny valley and the idea of real-time projections was unheard of.

And _finally_, he'd gotten approval.

Quentin headed research and development for the project, which had quickly grown from a small team to a whole lab as he began to produce results. It was more than just years of his life he'd sunk into A.R.I; the impassioned rise of his voice, his fevered hand movements, told Peter that he had _cared_. A.R.I was his life's work.

When A.R.I was complete, it was meant to be something revolutionary. A multi-purpose, completely unique tool with applications from the mundane to military. The possibilities were endless.

Part of why A.R.I's development had taken so much of Quentin's time at Stark Industries had mainly to do with the fact that the technology just didn't exist yet. The framework was there, but CGI was a slow and laborious process and projection technology ran with delays. A.R.I was unfinished, a work in progress waiting for just a few more minor breakthroughs.

And yet a month earlier, Tony Stark had premiered B.A.R.F during a presentation at MIT.

"I get it, _I get it_!" Quentin insisted. "I work for Stark Industries, so they own what I develop, I get it, it's all in my contract. I know what I signed. But Tony, _Stark_, he just... Just..."

He gestured emphatically, caught somewhere between heartbreak and anger again.

"Just _took_ it, when it wasn't even done yet, there was _so much more_ I needed to get right! But he took it anyway, rushed the presentation, made all these adjustments and additions and rebranded it as some mental health bullshit no normal person could afford _anyway_ and-!"

Quentin buried his face in his hands, breathing harshly. Peter watched as he shook, frustrated and hurting so deep that he couldn't contain it. He pushed his hands up, back through his hair, and there were tears brimming in his eyes again.

"He didn't tell me. About the changes. _No one_ told me about the changes. The name, the function, fucking- God. Shit. My name isn't even on the _fucking_ packaging anymore."

He laughed, the hollow and broken.

"And y'know, maybe, if he'd take the time to just _tell me_ what the _fuck _he was thinking, maybe I'd get over it! But _no_! No, I'm not good enough to warrant the attention of the _great_ Tony Stark. Can't have one sit down conversation because he's too busy running around being Iron Man, never mind the rest of us!"

Quentin hung his head, crossing his fingers over the back of his neck.

"Fuck." he rasped. "I just... I'm so fucking- I hate _feeling_ like this. I hate being this angry all the time, I hate caring so fucking much."

Peter's lips twitched into a sad smile.

"You wouldn't be you if you didn't care."

That's who Quentin Beck was, a man of passions. Everything he did became an emotional investment, something that he tied himself to so closely it may as well have been an extension of himself. Peter knew firsthand how ugly such strong emotions could be, he'd seen them eat Beck alive.

He pried Quentin's fingers from his neck and pulled him against his front instead. Immediately, arms wound around his middle. Trembling hands fisted in the back of his coat. Quentin buried his face against his shoulder and there was a choked sob.

Quentin broke down.

Holding him together was like trying to stop a glacier from cracking, or halt an avalanche halfway down a mountain. His emotions were a force of nature and Peter was one person trying to bottle a storm. It killed him to see Quentin teetering so close to the same edge of madness he was headed for years from now. Maybe that was inevitable, but in this moment, he didn't care.

Someone had to be here for him. _Someone_ had to let him cry and tell him that the world was more than the pain he was feeling. Peter hadn't had the words for it after Henrietta died and Quentin had walked away instead, left them both halved and questioning. This time, he held on tight and refused to shy away from his feelings.

"I know this is hard," he said, voice low. "You're angry, you wanna scream. Probably punch Mr. Stark really, _really_ hard."

And, Christ, that wasn't something Peter wanted to think about. Tony Stark occupied a complicated tangle of emotions in his chest and this latest revelation was just going to have to wait. Quentin Beck was falling to pieces in his arms and damnit, Peter wanted to _help_ him.

"You've gotta be better than that, though, Quin. I _know_ it seems like everything's out to get you, but I swear that's not it."

"Isn't it?" Quentin laughed wetly.

Peter tugged his hair until Quentin sat back enough for their eyes to meet. He was a mess, red-eyed, wet cheeked and miserable. So painfully, honestly human that it was beautiful in the most tragic way.

"It's _not_." Peter insisted fiercely.

Both hands cupped Quentin's messy cheeks, freezing cold against his warm skin. They were so close together that Peter could count his eyelashes and see the flecks of silver in his blue, blue eyes.

"Talk to , ask him why he did what he did. A.R.I was your _baby_, you deserve answers!" Peter paused to take a breath, startled by his own burst of outrage. Calmer, he said; "Promise me you'll try to talk to him."

Quentin stared at him wonderingly, as though he were seeing him for the very first time. A stray tear rolled down his cheek and Peter thumbed it away thoughtlessly.

"Say you'll try, Quin."

"I will." he replied, voice raw. "I promise."

Then, Quentin laughed, quick and sharp.

"What?" Peter frowned.

"Nothing, it's nothing. You're just..."

He laid a palm over the hand on his cheek, holding it still as he turned his head and pressed a tender kiss against Peter's palm.

"You're like a daydream, Peter." Quentin sighed against his skin. "Always there when I need you the most, and then you're just... gone."

Peter didn't know what to say. It felt like someone had stolen the breath from his lungs and tossed pop rocks in where his heart was meant to be. After everything Quentin had screamed at him earlier, it would be so easy to accuse him of lying. If only he weren't still pressing his mouth to his skin, smiling where only Peter could see it.

"I don't mean to be." There or gone? Even he wasn't sure.

"But you are."

But he was.

In the midst of a temporal crisis that could very well kill him, time and space kept aligning to drag Peter right back into Quentin's orbit. The why and how didn't even matter anymore. Whether there was an explanation or it was just _fate_, who cared? The universe clearly wanted him here, now, with Quentin.

And, unbelievably, there was nowhere Peter would rather be.

"I believe in you, Quentin. You know that, right?"

"I do."

He pulled Peter's hands from his cheeks, holding them close and laying kisses along his knuckles. With each press of his lips, another scar on Peter's heart healed. In his head, the ghost of Beck began to fade.

"Thank you, daydream." Quentin murmured.

Peter kissed him.

It was quick and clumsy, too forceful and sudden to be romantic, but no other kiss could compare. Their kiss under the mistletoe was a pale imitation of the lightning storm that passed between them in the span of one quick liplock.

When he sat back, Quentin was grinning.

"You can't just... call someone that." Peter blushed.

"Sure I can, daydream."

"_Quin_!"

Quentin's laugh echoed in the quiet night.

They parted ways more than an hour later, finding excuses to linger side by side until the hour grew too late to justify being out in the cold.

Peter watched Quentin Beck walk away and blipped before he could see him turn back around.


	6. Part 5

Peter found himself looking out on a snowstorm of truly epic proportions. The latest blip had been kind enough to leave him in an alcove between buildings with just enough shelter to keep him from being completely exposed to the elements. If he had been, he was fairly certain that the blustering winds would have bowled him over before the vertigo of the jump faded.

Observing his surroundings was comically pointless. The world was a plane of blank white on a shadowy backdrop. Formless mounds of snow hid everyday objects, but appeared only as hills and valleys across the colorless expanse. Peter could have been standing on his very own street, looking at his own apartment building, and not known it.

Across the street, warm light glowed from within the first floor of a squat building. From where he stood Peter could just barely make out a sign hanging above the door, dragged nearly horizontal by the wind. Instinct bade him to follow the enticing promise of heat, so Peter did.

Stuffing both hands into his pockets, Peter ducked his head and tried to hide his nose in the collar of his coat. Immediately, the wind tried to unbalance him. A walk of maybe thirty feet suddenly felt like trying to cross the entirety of the Arctic tundra. But he persevered, head down and legs dragging slowly through the snow.

A bell above the door chimed cheerily when he entered, announcing his arrival. Peter shoved the door shut behind him and breathed a sigh of relief once the catch clicked into place. The howling wind became a muffled moan and warmth began to tentatively seep in past the layers of cold.

Peter had stepped into a pub lit by dim yellow bulbs. The polished mahogany of the bar took up nearly the entirety of the wall to his right, while the rest of the space was rimmed by large, semi-circular booths. He stamped his feet on the welcome mat to dislodge the quickly melting snow from his shoes.

Tables sat scattered in the space between the bar and booths, occupied by a smattering of people who had chosen to take refuge from the storm. A young couple holding hands atop the table sat in the center of the room, and several tables over, a businessman frowning at his phone. Various people who looked like regulars arranged themselves elsewhere, two settled properly at the bar nursing bottles of beer. And in the corner booth at the back, there was Quentin Beck.

They locked eyes across the bar. Quentin sat right beneath one of the twin bulbs, haloed by golden light. A glass of something amber rested against his lips, tipped as if to drink, but stalled there as they stared at one another. He lowered the glass slowly and licked his teeth.

Glass clicked against glass from behind the bar, drawing Peter's attention. The barman nodded to him in greeting, stacking another set of tumblers without looking.

"What'll it be?" he asked gruffly.

Peter jerked his chin in Quentin's direction.

"I'll have whatever he's drinking."

A second nod before the barman turned away. He selected a glass and poured two fingers from a bottle of malt whiskey, then slid it across the polished bartop.

"On the house." he said.

Peter smiled his thanks and took the drink.

Shocking blue eyes remained locked onto him as he wove through the tables towards the back of the bar. Quentin sat, relaxed and expectant, as though he'd been waiting for him the whole time. He looked good like that, at ease, top buttons of his shirt undone and fingers resting around his glass.

Peter shrugged his coat off his shoulders as he slid into the curved booth. He left only enough space between them to slip the rest of the way out of his coat.

"About time you showed up, daydream."

Quentin's voice was low and rich, smooth like the whiskey in his glass. The beard made him look older, more dignified. Peter liked it.

"Am I too late?" he asked.

"Never."

A hand reached for the side of Peter's neck, cupping the length of his throat in one huge palm. It stayed there for a moment, then eased up to cradle his cheek. He leaned into Quentin's touch with a happy sigh, eyes fluttering half shut.

"You're cold." Quentin observed idly, his thumb stroking over the soft skin beneath Peter's eye.

The storm outside rattled the windows in their frames.

"Not so much anymore."

They sat in comfortable silence, nursing their whiskey. Quentin's hand became an arm around his shoulders, and before long, Peter was tucked against his side. He couldn't help noting how well he fit there.

A clock hung behind the bar, but it had stopped who knew how long ago. Time was irrelevant here. There was a cacophony of nature outside, but inside was warm and quiet. The whiskey was good, the company better, and nothing prevented them from staying right where they were until the next blip took him home.

It was some time before either of them spoke. Quentin finished his whiskey, then set the glass down and stared at it a while.

"I was fired." he said at last.

Peter paused and placed his half-finished whiskey back on the table.

"Why?"

"It doesn't matter." Quentin sighed. "It boils down to me making too much noise. I wouldn't let the fucking fiasco with B.A.R.F go and they got sick of me."

"Did you ever get to talk to Mr. Stark?"

"No."

Peter frowned at his glass.

Maybe Mr. Stark had been busy. Maybe Quentin's requests for a meeting had never made it all the way up the line. Maybe Mr. Stark really had no intention of explaining himself. Maybe so very many things, none of them important, because that chapter of Quentin's life was over.

"Are you angry, Quin?"

"I was." he admitted. "I should be."

Quentin looked tired and worn at the edges. All the energy, born both of ambition and anger, had been drained from him.

"But you aren't?" Peter prompted.

"I was expecting it. I tried to be patient, do everything the right way, but it just didn't work out. I figured I'd go out being a pain in the ass or get my way."

A world-weary sigh exhaled from his chest.

"I'm not angry." he said. "I just don't feel seen, y'know? I don't feel heard. Like I don't exist or something."

"I hear you." Peter met his eyes. "I see you."

An expression of veneration melted over Quentin's face. In the golden glow of the faux-lamplight, he looked softer than he had in a very long time.

"I know you do, daydream."

They had been on a collision course since they met that snowy night so long ago. Peter couldn't avoid it, even if he had sincerely tried. And had he, really? Even when Quin revealed himself as Quentin Beck, Peter still found his way back to him. He was a constant in his universe, a certainty in the midst of chaos. This felt, in many ways, inevitable.

When Quentin bent down to kiss him, Peter met him halfway. It wasn't perfect, the angle was all wrong and Peter's head was tilted too far back. Their noses bumped and they laughed, breathless and soft, and then they tried again. They lingered, neither willing to be the one to pull away.

Abandoning all pretense of chastity, Quentin licked Peter's mouth open and pressed his tongue between his teeth. Peter allowed his jaw to go slack, mirroring what was done to him and learning by example. Quentin was a fantastic kisser. Every flick of his tongue deliberate, all the desire Peter poured into the kiss, reciprocated.

It would have gone on longer, had they not needed to breathe. Breaking for oxygen was just an excuse to stare at one another, cheeks pink and eyes bright with a mutual flame.

This made three kisses that Peter had shared with Quentin Beck. Their first, beneath the mistletoe, had been one-sided and melancholy. The second, on a park bench in the cold, had been done in impulse. And this, the third, was done out of pure and honest affection for one another.

The magnitude of adoring Quentin Beck was overwhelming. Rather than allow it to consume him, Peter slid a hand against the nape of his neck and guided him into another kiss.

A second kiss became a third, then a fourth. No one seemed to care that their embrace was steadily growing more heated. Isolated by the blizzard, the pub's patrons all seemed content to remain in their own bubble of anonymity. Who cared what the couple in the back booth were doing?

It could have gone on for hours for all Peter knew. He felt wild and untethered, the burden of responsibility sloughed from his shoulders. There was only the two of them, with their wandering hands and quiet laughter between deepening liplocks. And he could have happily stayed there until quantum vibrations took him home, except that Quentin said;

"Wanna get out of here?"

The implications alone were enough to send a shiver down Peter's spine. Caution had been thrown to the wind a long time ago, but inhibitions chose now to join it.

"Yes." he breathed eagerly. "Let's go."

Fifteen minutes later found them stumbling through the front door of a converted apartment building into a shabby hotel lobby. They leaned into one another heavily, trying to regain their balance after being tossed about by the wind. Outside, the blizzard continued its rampage.

There was snow in Quentin's beard, which Peter brushed away with numb hands. He was freezing, underdressed for the weather, but his favorite set of blue eyes were sparkling with mirth and he had to kiss him again. Peter used Quentin's scarf to drag him down, smiling into the coldest kiss he'd ever had.

It felt wonderful.

A drowsy receptionist greeted them in monotone as they approached the front desk. She didn't bother to ask what kind of room they wanted, just named a price and lazily reached for a keycard.

Peter wound his arms around Quentin's middle and rested against his side while he paid, occupying himself by glancing around the neglected lobby. It was empty and poorly furnished, save some threadbare armchairs and an ancient looking vending machine. The vending machine caught his eye, because aside from the usual snacks and sodas, at the very top corner it had also stocked such essentials as lubricant and condoms.

"Hey," he hummed, leaning up to speak against Quentin's jaw. "Gimme a five?"

Quentin stole a kiss and handed him a five dollar bill.

Shortly thereafter, a hand swatted Peter's ass as he bent over to retrieve their supplies from the vending machine. His indignant yelp dissolved into laughter because Quentin was grinning at him, keycard in hand. It was easier to kiss him and bite his bottom lip than find the words to reprimand him.

Supplies stuffed into his pocket and room paid for, they hurried into the outdated elevator. No sooner had the door creaked its way shut than Quentin was on him, lips pressed to his neck and hands fumbling to undo the front of Peter's jacket.

"What floor?"

"Mmh?" Quentin mumbled against his neck. "Six."

Peter felt for the right button blindly, gasping as cold hands slid beneath the hem of his shirt.

In the time it took to rise slowly to the sixth floor, they began to warm up again.

Their room was in the middle of a long hallway, which gave them enough time to get distracted kissing, but not enough to really lose any sense of decency. It was a coordinated effort to pry themselves apart long enough to scramble through the door and lock it behind them.

Miraculously, they found a light switch and managed to move from the entryway into the main room without pausing more than twice. Quentin stepped away with the promise to be back as soon as he turned the heat up. While he cranked the thermostat, Peter kicked off his shoes and left his coat on the back of the room's only chair. He tossed the lube and condoms onto the bed, then dropped down on the edge to wait.

Humming filled the room as hot air began circulating from the vents, joining the howls of the tempest outside.

Peter leaned back on his palms and watched as Quentin divested himself of his outer layers. First his gloves, then his scarf, and finally his coat. Watching nimble fingers undo quarter-sized buttons had never seemed erotic before, but in this context Peter found himself bewitched. Those same fingers had been under his shirt not ten minutes ago, stealing his body heat after being out in the snow.

Finally, Quentin came to stand between his knees. He undid his cuffs and smiled when an adventurous set of hands reached up to help unbutton the rest of his shirt. Once his button-down had been discarded, Peter pressed affectionate kisses to his belly, fingers toying with his belt buckle.

As his belt loosened, Quentin carded thick curls back from Peter's forehead. His hands trailed down the back of his skull and slid up, cradling his face between both palms.

"God, you're so damn pretty, daydream." Quentin sighed. "Always have been."

"Shut up." Peter blushed. "You're one to talk."

He bit the thumb that drifted over his bottom lip and watched as Quentin's eyes darkened with lust. Deliberately holding his gaze, Peter popped the button on his jeans and tugged the zipper slowly downward.

"Get down here, handsome."

Quentin obeyed.

The bed shifted and groaned beneath them, complaining feebly as the eager couple made themselves comfortable. Nothing had even happened and the headboard was already tapping against the wall like something out of a cliche. Peter spared a thought for any neighbors they may have in the rooms next door. Sorry!

He kept himself just out of reach, prompting a growl from the man prowling over him. One cheeky smile and Quentin was baring his teeth, diving down to kiss him harshly. Peter moaned into it, opening his mouth wide to welcome the demanding kiss. And while the larger man was distracted, he caught his waist and pushed him over, switching their positions.

Peter sat back, straddling Quentin's waist and paused to admire the view. He looked startled, aroused, and delighted by the young man sitting on his torso. Being looked at like that was a hell of an ego boost, and he hadn't even taken his clothes off yet.

His shirt was first to go, discarded carelessly off to the side. Quentin's hands dragged up his thighs, firmly kneading the muscles there.

"Fuck, look at you." he breathed.

Peter bit his bottom lip. He rocked back, grinding down against the growing mound between Quentin's thighs. A throaty moan and the hands on his hips clenched down harder, holding him in place to maintain friction.

Nothing could quite describe the giddy revelation that he could feel Quentin getting hard underneath him. Peter dropped his head back and rolled his hips experimentally, grinning to himself when it earned him another deep groan. Lolling his head down again, he found Quentin's pupils blown so wide his eyes were nearly black.

He growled, bracing one hand on Peter's hip while the other shoved down the back of his jeans. Nails bit into the tender flesh of his ass as Quentin yanked him up. Off balance, he fell forward easily, catching himself on his arms before their bodies collided. Quentin's hand was in his hair again, guiding him into an open mouthed kiss.

Peter panted, hips churning as he frotted against the firm body beneath him. They were moving together, not in synch, but with the same intent. Both of Quentin's hands found their way into his pants, fussing the denim down his thighs until Peter could shimmy out of them entirely. As he kicked them off, their positions flipped again.

Naked underneath Quentin Beck was not somewhere Peter had never anticipated being, but fuck was he glad to be there now.

Quentin was a vision of hunger and lust distilled down to a tongue running over sharp canines and tousled hair. The way his eyes trailed over the length of Peter's body was caught somewhere between the reverence of a devout man and the desire of a sinner. He looked like he couldn't decide what he wanted, aside from everything.

He chose to begin with his mouth on Peter's chest. Teeth and lips took turns on the sensitive skin around his nipples, then trailed down to suck a bruise on his ribs. Peter rested his hands on Quentin's shoulders, tracing patterns on his skin as his mouth traveled downward.

Across his fluttering stomach, where his teeth drew gasps from Peter's throat and left marks behind. He stopped at his hip, kissed down, down, down before stopping to ask;

"Lube?"

Oh.

Good question, actually.

After some squirming and patting the sheets, they realized the bottle had slid off the bed at some point. Quentin retrieved both it and the condoms, taking the opportunity to step out of his jeans and underwear. And, well... If Peter thought he looked good in his clothes, he looked even better out of them.

Nothing described Quentin quite as well as masculine. He was built for physical labor, broad and muscled with a deep V cutting from his hips to pelvis. The definition in his torso was subtle, an implication more than a statement, and his biceps bulged just slightly when he moved. The hair on his chest trailed down his body into a forest of curls at the base of his dick, which angled down just slightly with the weight of itself.

And though he was allowed to be staring, Peter still flushed when he glanced up and caught Quentin's knowing smirk.

"See something you like, Peter?" he teased.

"Yeah." He watched as Quentin settled back into place between his thighs, like he was accustomed to being there. "You're gorgeous."

There was a moment of startled silence, broken by the quietest breath of his name.

"Peter..."

Quentin kissed him like he was fire and Peter was oxygen, like all that mattered in the whole universe was being in this moment.

He trailed back down his body, slower this time, mouth following a path set by his hands. Soon enough, Peter was squirming and trying to urge Quentin to go faster as his mouth drew closer to his sex. Distantly, he heard the cap pop on the lube bottle, but it fled his mind the moment lips pressed to the crown of his prick.

His hands slid into thick tresses, anchoring himself with fingers tangled in Quentin's hair. The moan forming in his throat came out choked.

"Quin-!"

Nothing prepared him for the feeling of being being swallowed effortlessly, like gag reflexes just didn't exist.

"Ohmygod-"

Peter's head fell back against the cheap hotel pillows, neck arched. Quentin's cheeks hollowed around him and stars exploded behind his eyelids. He sucked and swallowed and did interesting things with his tongue that made it impossible to think straight.

Testament to how incredible he was with his mouth, Peter didn't notice the slick fingers massaging his hole until Quentin pulled off him with a pop. He focused his attentions on the vein running the underside of his cock instead, applying pressure against the tight ring of muscle in warning. The first thick digit slid into him, sinking inside with almost no resistance from Peter's body.

Peter canted his hips up eagerly, nails scratching down Quentin's scalp to the nape of his neck. Just one finger was almost enough to undo him then and there. Precum dripped onto his belly, chest heaving with the effort to control his own breathing. Everything was blurred at the edges by the heatwave pooling in the pit of his stomach.

A second finger pried him open, forcing a cry from his gaping mouth. Quentin rotated his wrist, curving his fingers up until he found the squishy bundle of nerves he was after. Peter almost screamed when he pressed against his prostate, whole body arching in response. He could feel Quentin's grin against his hip, and then his mouth was sliding back down his prick and the world went fuzzy.

His first orgasm hit him like a physical weight, knocking the breath from his lungs. What could have been a wail came out in a staccato warble as his body bowed upward, trying desperately to get closer to the man between his legs. Quentin's fingers were relentless, fucking into him even as his orgasm wracked his body with tremors. He swallowed as Peter spilled down his throat, humming his satisfaction around his overly sensitive prick.

The descent was as tumultuous as his release. Peter collapsed against the bed, gasping for breath, bones turned to jelly. He was shaking, the aftershocks twitching through him every few seconds. Quentin pulled away slowly, extracting his fingers and pressing kisses up his shuddering belly.

"So fucking beautiful." he sighed once he reached his neck, leaving a kiss at the junction of his jaw.

Peter whined in reply until Quentin took pity on him and lowered himself to his elbows, pressing him down into the mattress. He exhaled happily, eyes drifting shut as soft kisses feathered over his face. The weight of Quentin's erection lay nestled against his hip, a heavy promise of what was to come. Every now and then he would grind down against him, rubbing slick precum onto his belly.

It didn't take Peter long to recover. He started squirming and rolling his hips up, frotting against the firm muscle of Quentin's thigh.

"Raring to go already?" Quentin chuckled.

"Uh-huh."

"You sure, daydream?"

"Yes." Peter bit his shoulder, reaching between them to wrap a hand around Quentin's leaking prick. "Wanna ride you, Quin. Let me?"

A full body shiver traveled down Quentin's spine.

"God, yes," he growled. "Absolutely."

Thankfully, the condoms had not gone missing a second time.

Peter straddled Quentin's hips, one hand braced on his chest while the other reached back to hold his cock steady. He couldn't help sliding him teasingly between his cheeks, just to hear another growl and feel powerful hands flexing on his thighs.

"Peter..."

"What?" he said innocently.

Before Quentin could reply, he lifted himself and sank down onto his dick. Their moans echoed loudly around the small room, tinged with relief.

The burn of being stretched around the girth of his cock created the most exquisite play between pain and pleasure. With each inch he lowered himself, Peter became more sure he could feel Quentin pressing against his stomach, sometimes all the way up to the back of his throat. It was better than any shot of adrenaline to his system, rocketing him toward sensory overload.

"Alright, daydream?" Quentin breathed, smoothing his large palms up Peter's sides and down along his thighs again.

"Yeah, yeah, just... need a second."

Peter bowed his head and braced both hands on Quentin's chest, breathing deeply as he adjusted. He rose experimentally and slid back down, prompting another moan from both of them. Again, he rocked upwards and sank back, leveraging himself on the hands fondling Quentin's pecs to steady his movements. Fingers curled around his waist and helped to guide him into a consistent rhythm.

The pace they set was quick and hard, building with Peter's confidence. He swiveled his hips experimentally, smiling when it garnered a loud moan from the man underneath him. In retaliation, Quentin met his next fall by thrusting up, burying himself even deeper inside his body.

Peter keened, nails biting into Quentin's chest as he drove up into him with each bounce. And despite the stamina he should have had, he felt his thighs beginning to shake and his breathing becoming frantic. The end was rushing up to meet him much faster this time, the build of fire in his belly too hot for him to prolong.

Quentin pulled him down by the nape of his neck, smashing their mouths together in a violent kiss that was more tongue and teeth than anything else. Peter's hips rocked erratically, only to be stilled by a hand on his sex and a snarl against his lips. Feet braced on the bed, Quentin set a punishing pace of fucking into him, slamming relentlessly into his prostate as soon as he found the right angle.

Peter felt like he was coming apart. Like his atoms were splitting and cells dividing, like being pulled through time but hot and blinding and incredible. His senses were tuned up so high he couldn't see or hear, could barely feel besides a persistent ecstasy burning through him like wildfire. All he could do was cry Quentin's name and clutch at the sheets until finally he broke.

The orgasm that ripped through him was revolutionary. Peter could feel himself shattering, falling apart in sobs and wails of euphoria. It felt as though the earth had shifted on its axis. As if everything was different now.

He collapsed against Quentin's heaving chest, the world faded white at the edges and consciousness slipping through his fingers like sand. Peter was dimly aware of warm hands stroking up and down his back and lips against the shell of his ear.

Quentin murmured something, but it was lost to his subconscious as he drifted off.

Peter woke not long after, having only dozed for perhaps half an hour in the wake of his second orgasm. The storm had quieted outside. The room was warm and Quentin's chest rose and fell steadily beneath his cheek. A digital clock blinked on the side table.

He could have laid there forever, comforted by the gentle thudding of Quentin's heartbeat. If only the universe were less cruel and they had more time.

Easing himself from Quentin's chest felt like ripping off a bandaid. He was sore and empty without him, colder despite the temperature of the room. It took everything to convince himself that this was the better way, that he had to leave the bed.

As he stood, a hand caught his wrist.

"Wait," Quentin murmured. "Don't go yet."

His clear blue eyes stared straight through Peter, digging grooves into his heart. Longing echoed mournfully in his chest, like a wraith haunting his soul.

"I have to." he said.

Quentin didn't ask why and he didn't let go. He forced Peter to be the one to pull away.

It felt like tearing himself in two.

Peter dressed and left the room in silence.

He took the elevator to the lobby and left through a door marked with a faded exit sign. There was the definitive snap of a lock behind him and then he was trapped outside. Peter looked up, through the delicate flurries the great squall had been reduced to, at the snowbound city.

It was still cold enough outside that his tears froze as they slid down his cheeks.

* * *

"Peter?" Dr. Pym frowned. "Peter! We need to know-!"

"Later." Hope said, laying a hand on her father's shoulder.

Scott hovered by the door, watching as Peter dragged himself towards the bathroom.

The shower in the observation suite was pretty awful. Either it was the correct temperature with shit water pressure, or the water pressure was right and the temperature was at one of two extremes. Usually, Peter suffered through the weak shower rather than freeze or boil.

Tonight, he stood beneath the pounding spray, steam clouding the world around him, and rested his head against the wall.

Thoughts clamoured senselessly for his attention, scrambling for purchase in the footholds of his mind. He felt too much, emotions piling atop emotions until he broke under their weight and felt nothing at all. Peter closed his eyes and tried to let the water drown out the world.

For the first time in a long while, he thought about Tony Stark. He thought of his accomplishments and his failings, how beneath the suit he was only human. How knowing his idol had made Peter a better man and a worse hero, because if Tony Stark was anything, he was a hero. Self-sacrificing, desperate to save the world, and ultimately flawed.

People were what the world made them. Tony Stark cared about people, protected what he believed in, until it killed him. Quentin Beck lost everything no matter how he tried to hold tight to what he cared about, and it made him a monster. And Peter Parker tried, over and over, to do the right thing.

With his eyes closed, scalding water pounding against the back of his neck, all Peter could hear was Quentin's voice whispering "I love you" as he drifted off.


	7. Part 6

"Hey kiddo, you wanna talk?"

Peter lifted his head from his arms.

Scott looked concerned. He _always_ looked concerned these days. Or was it just today? Peter couldn't be sure anymore; he'd had a breakdown at some point when he glanced at a clock and after that Dr. Pym had covered all of them.

Inside the containment cell, there was no concept of time. The month felt as if it should have ended already, but he was sure someone would have told him if Christmas had come and gone. His aunt, surely, would have mentioned it. Had she? He'd spoken to May three times in recent memory. Two of the conversations had been identical.

The S.H.I.E.L.D agents assisting Dr. Pym were also identical, or maybe they were all totally different, Peter couldn't focus on them long enough to tell. Fury and Maria Hill appeared and disappeared in his periphery from time to time, but rarely approached. New monitors had been mounted on the walls, new scanners hooked into place.

When was the last time he'd eaten? Slept? Showered? _Seen Quin?_

"...Not really." Peter said, finally.

"Okay." Scott exhaled, hands on his hips. "You wanna hear about the first time Hope and I teamed up?"

"Oh here we go again." Dr. Pym grumbled. "Don't believe a word he says, kid, he's all talk."

Hope smiled.

Peter smiled too, faint as it was.

"Yeah. Sure."

Scott grinned and grabbed a chair, dragging it up to the glass so he could begin his tale. Peter rested his chin on his arms and listened with only half his attention.

He wondered if Scott knew this was the third time he'd told this story, or if it was just the third time Peter had blipped his way into hearing it.

* * *

Peter was first aware of fluorescent lights above him, then a loud clatter from somewhere to his left. He blinked dazedly up at the dilapidated ceiling and, lowering his gaze, found himself to be in the canned goods aisle of a supermarket.

Quentin Beck stood at the end of the aisle to his left, an upturned shopping basket at his feet.

"Quin-" Peter began, relieved and terrified all at once. His heart leapt to see Quentin again, yet twisted with anxiety when he remembered how their last meeting ended.

Before he could finish his thought, whatever it may have been, Quentin rushed him. There was little for Peter to do besides brace for the incoming impact and hope he wasn't about to have his nose broken. But instead of being punched, he found himself crushed to Quentin's chest.

"_You're here_," Quentin rasped.

He let go as quickly as he'd grabbed him, leaving Peter in a daze. Shaking hands skidded up his arms, fluttered down his chest and then abruptly skipped back up to his neck. Calloused fingertips skimmed over his face. Quentin's eyes were wide and wild, shadowed beneath unkempt bangs.

"You're here," he repeated, tremor traveling from his hands to his voice. "Oh my god, _you're here_."

"I- Yeah?" Peter fumbled.

"I thought after everyone- All the _dust_\- Peter, _daydream_-"

Quentin stopped, his whole body shaking, and then he fell apart. He crumbled to his knees, his head bowed against Peter's belly. A choked sob clawed its way out of his throat.

Peter stood frozen in place, his heart somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.

So this was the world after the Snap.

From the way people talked about it- and they didn't, not ever if they could avoid it -Peter assumed that life had just gone on. He wasn't sure why he'd thought that. Maybe because it was easier. Because otherwise, he had to think about the people left behind.

_"Mr. Stark... I don't feel so good-"_

There had been this look on Tony Stark's face. An expression so stricken that Peter couldn't bare to think of it. Like the world was ending right in front of him. And it had been. That was the joke of it.

The world had fucking ended and taken Peter with it.

This was what had been left behind. Empty grocery shelves and dead silence. Men broken down the middle, cracked open so only raw wounds remained on the surface.

_"You're here."_

Only he wasn't. Not really. Peter had known, since the first time he appeared in New York City, that _he_ was out there somewhere. Another Peter Parker, living his life completely oblivious to the future. But not this time.

What was left of Peter Parker was a million miles away on an unnamed planet. A pile of dust.

Quentin didn't know that.

It was this thought that brought Peter back into focus. All that separated this from their prior meetings was the knowledge that his existence here was a contradiction, and since when was that a revelation? Peter wasn't meant to be in _any_ of the times he had been. Each time they found their way back together, it altered a pre-existing reality. Maybe not to this extreme, but it _did_.

So the Peter Parker of this time had been erased, so what? Peter was here, _now_, and so was Quentin Beck.

"Quentin..."

He sank to the floor and wound his arms tightly around the trembling man.

"It's okay. It's okay, I'm here." Peter turned his face into Quentin's unwashed hair, hushing him softly as a violent sob wracked his frame. "I'm here, baby. I promise I'm here."

Eventually, Quentin's trembling subsided, but not before tears were shed and bruises gripped into Peter's sides. He didn't mind. Each time Quentin pressed his face to his neck to muffle a sob, he pulled him closer and fluttered kisses against whatever skin he could reach.

They clung to each other, heedless of the passage of time, until they found the strength to part. In silence they collected both themselves and the discarded basket of groceries at the end of the aisle. Not much was in it. A few soup cans, a box of pasta, and a bag of mixed nuts. Peter frowned at the meager assortment, then took Quentin's hand and set off down the aisle.

Sparse offerings lay scattered across half-empty shelves. No one had bothered to straighten anything, there wasn't enough left for it to really make a difference. Peter found a dented can of peaches next to two cans of baked beans and tossed all three into the basket.

The next aisle wasn't much better. A box of saltines, a can of salted peanuts, and a lone box of graham crackers. The aisle after that didn't have anything in it at all.

Peter had once gone to a twenty four hour grocery store with May when they'd taken a very rare road trip upstate. He could remember how unreal and eerie it felt to be walking through a mostly empty shop, standing under the too-bright fluorescent lighting at almost midnight. This, currently, was somehow _more_ unsettling than that.

It wasn't just the barren shelves. No music played to fill the silence. Mist sprayed over a produce section devoid of any produce. There were no carts with squeaky wheels or children throwing tantrums; only the half-stocked freezers made a sound.

Piles of American cheese lay strewn in the refrigerated dairy section. Not stacked or neatly piled, but dumped into the lowest shelves in a disorganized mess. There was nothing else, just American cheese, and it was so fucking bizarre that Peter just stood and stared at it for a solid minute before taking two of the packages.

Only one register bore an open sign. A gray-faced cashier manned the till, her whole body slumped weirdly. She scanned their items mechanically and placed them gingerly in bags, her gaze unfocused and distant.

Peter felt fingers tighten around his palm and turned to look up at Quentin.

He looked... wrecked. Aside from his limp hair, his beard was overgrown and in desperate need of a trim. There were dark smudges under his sunken eyes, giving his face a hollow cast. His clothes were painfully casual, wrinkled and disheveled beneath a heavy coat which he hadn't bothered to close.

It hurt something deep in Peter's chest to see him like this. An invisible weight had settled on his shoulders, sloping them downwards with none of the proud posture he was used to seeing. None of the confidence and charisma Quentin exuded was present now, just a heavy melancholy that hung like fog about him.

No words could do justice to the raw pain Peter saw in his eyes. One look at Quentin told him that there was no measure for the devastation that the Snap had left in its wake.

The cashier may have read their total aloud, but her voice was so quiet it hardly registered. Peter stood on his toes and kissed Quentin's smileless mouth. He didn't kiss back.

They collected their bags, paid with a card, and left at last. If Peter had been hoping for some relief from the oppressive ambiance of the decrepit grocery store when stepping outside, his hopes were thoroughly crushed. Beyond the automatic doors lay a world that reminded him strongly of what purgatory may look like, if it took the shape of New York City.

In the way that hotel rooms all appear identical, yet slightly different from place to place, this New York was the same as he remembered while still being horrifically different. People drifted along the grubby pavement like ghosts, skirting around each other without ever acknowledging another living soul. Rusted bikes clung to signposts by fraying chains; abandoned cars sat awkwardly in the street, half-parked or crashed into other vehicles.

Plots of empty dirt sat forlornly between plots of dead flowers and wilting trees, seasonally barren, but without the hope of spring to come. Now and again they'd walk past random items left to decay on the concrete, innocuous enough if not for the knowledge that their owners had not dropped them willingly. A cell phone, a book, the shriveled remains of a bouquet, a child's moldy stuffed rabbit.

The world was grayer, dulled through a sepia filter. Even the winter wind gusting through the desolate streets seemed melancholy. Stubbornly, a single bookshop they passed had chosen to erect their customary holiday decorations despite the state of the world. The vibrant colors and glistening baubles all fell flat, despite their excess.

Five years from now, Peter would be coming back to a fucked up world. An Earth in shambles, unsteady on its own feet, But it wasn't like _this_. This was fallout on such a massive scale that it transcended the physical and carved its way into the very souls of humanity.

The world had not just been _halved_, it had been utterly _broken_.

Peter kept his head down and tried very hard not to think of his Aunt May, out there somewhere in Queens, alone. If he just found a subway, he could hop trains until he got to his neighborhood and go see her. He could promise her he was coming home. But that would change the past, and who knew if the trains still ran?

Quentin lived in an apartment building with a doorman. Or at least with the counter where a doorman should have sat and a guestbook with a half-filled page of names. There was no doorman and the dates in the guestbook were likely long past.

A sleek black cat with a notch in one ear greeted them at the door. She mewed once, wide green eyes affixed on Peter, who was granted a cursory sniff before she rubbed the length of her body against his shin. He was then promptly abandoned in favor of Quentin, whose legs she wound herself between continuously as he made his way down the hall. This must have been a common occurrence, because he didn't so much as break stride.

The essence of Quentin Beck spilled across the apartment in old movie posters and a living room furnished for entertaining large groups. Moody photographs and eclectic artwork hung in thematically appropriate frames, bunched together in carefully arranged exhibitions. Records and CDs lined shelves alongside books of all shapes and sizes, interspaced with sculpted bookends and the small knick knacks collected in a life thoroughly lived.

In defiance of the bright, creative spirit which clearly inhabited the space, the apartment was gloomy. Thin curtains remained drawn despite the afternoon sun and dust collected atop the keys of the baby grand piano in the corner. Frames had been laid face down on shelves and against the wall, as if Quentin could neither bear to look at nor get rid of their subjects.

Peter dumped their hodgepodge groceries onto the kitchen counter, then opened the cupboards and fridge. All were almost bare, which was probably the only reason Quentin had bothered to go out today. Thank god he'd blipped in then and filled the shopping basket to brimming, because he wasn't positive the kitchen would be any better stocked if he hadn't.

"Do you care where I put things?" he asked, fairly certain the answer was yes.

Quentin paused, one arm still in his coat, deliberated, then shrugged. Peter swallowed a bubble of frustration, rolled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt and got to work.

Negotiating a meal out of the odds and ends they'd purchased shouldn't have been difficult, except that Peter was limited by his own cooking skills. If he ever made it home, he resolved to improve on that in the future. For now, he focused on putting away groceries and running through the short list of meals he knew how to make.

Technically, soup wasn't on that list, but _canned_ soup didn't count, it just needed to be reheated. And while shopping he'd found a lone loaf of bread, the good crusty kind that needed a bread knife. It was a little stale, but Quentin had butter, and Peter could make a mean grilled cheese. Not the most sophisticated meal in the world, but it was going to be warm and filling, which was good enough.

Into a pot went two cans of tomato soup. Peter found a bread knife and sliced thick slabs from the loaf, buttering each individually with the half-stick of butter that was left. He was aware of Quentin at the small breakfast table, watching him. His coat hung from the back of his chair and when he glanced over, Peter was struck by the memory of Quin on the night they'd met.

A lifetime had passed since then. Peter knew that for him it hadn't yet been a month, but he felt as though he'd spent years with Quentin, always two steps behind whatever suffering he had to endure. And it wasn't fair, watching the spark burn out inside him without being able to do anything about it.

Peter dropped two pieces of buttered bread into the hot pan and tore open the American cheese with slightly too much force.

The reality was that the future was fast rushing to meet him. Or was it the present? He didn't know. Worse, he wasn't really sure what would happen when time aligned itself again. Dr. Pym kept frowning and making notations each time Peter noted a blip, but no one ever told him what any of it _meant_. If he blipped forward, into his own time, would he cease to blip backwards at all? Or would something more cataclysmic, more _fatal_, occur?

The faster he vibrated, the easier it became to slip through time, and the less stable his temporal being was. When that stability disintegrated, would he simply cease to exist? Or would he be trapped both in and out of time, alive, but incorporeal throughout every era?

It was as these thoughts began to consume him that arms encircled his waist. Peter melted almost instantly. He sagged against Quentin's firm torso, an eye on their sandwiches, but his focus on the length of the body now pressed to his back.

"I missed you." Quentin murmured, his lips brushing the shell of his ear.

If possible, Peter would have melted even further, but his full weight was already resting in the arms around him.

"I missed you too, Quin." he sighed, touching a hand to Quentin's jaw. He turned his head, laying a tender kiss on his cheekbone.

The black cat, whose name turned out to be Rosemary, joined them in the kitchen when it was apparent no one would be coming to give her attention elsewhere. She sniffed at an offering of cheese and chirped, stretching up and hooking her claws into their jeans until someone dropped a hand to scratch between her ears.

Peter stood with Quentin's breathing on his back and Rosemary's purring against his thigh, and was suddenly very glad for the cat's existence. He wasn't sure why, but he got the sense that without her, he may not have met Quentin again at all.

They carried plates of toasty sandwiches and bowls of piping hot soup into the living room to eat. Quentin hunched over his meal and began wolfing it down as though he hadn't eaten in days, which for all Peter knew, could have been the case. He tried not to think on it.

He shucked off his sweatshirt once he was sitting and tossed it over the back of the couch, where Rosemary promptly sat on it. Peter watched in bemusement as she settled herself and extended a hand. She sniffed his fingers, then rubbed her cheek against them, apparently deigning them acceptable petting instruments.

As he scratched under her chin, Peter's eyes were drawn to the mantle behind them. In the center there sat a menorah, candles unburnt. A photograph of Henrietta Beck rested beside it in a simple, age-worn frame.

Henrietta was smiling brilliantly at the photographer, her cheeks flushed with joy. She was wearing a sunhat and a floral dress, on the backdrop of a park at the height of summer. The weariness Peter remembered her carrying was gone and she radiated a warm, feminine beauty that made him ache for a home he'd never known.

"I wish I could have said goodbye to her." he murmured, truthfully.

"She liked you."

Peter turned his head swiftly, startled by the admission.

"She did?"

Quentin glanced up at him.

"Yeah." he said after a moment, before his eyes fell back to his plate. "She worried, after you left. Wondered where you'd gone."

White hot guilt lanced through Peter's chest.

It had been out of his control and he knew that, but there would always be some part of him that wished he could open his eyes and see Quin's star-speckled ceiling again. Just the same as there would always be a piece of him left behind in that hotel room in the middle of a snowstorm.

"I'm sorry." Peter said.

Quentin's broad shoulders rose and fell in a limp shrug. When he spoke again, it was a mumble.

"I worried too."

They ate in silence after that. The cushion's worth of distance between them became a canyon, which Peter was too apprehensive to cross it.

Words unspoken hung like a guillotine above his head. It would be so _easy_ to tell Quentin everything; explain the Snap, the blipping, the future yawning cruelly before them. He couldn't do anything for Henrietta, or A.R.I, or Quentin's job at Stark Industries, but maybe he could fix this. All it would take was risking the fallout of altering a timeline already riddled with holes.

Quentin forewent a spoon and lifted the bowl to his mouth, drinking the last of his soup. Peter watched him, unfinished meal cooling on his plate. What appetite he'd had was gone.

"I've got it." he said, before Quentin had even finished putting his bowl down.

He carried their dishes to the sink, disposing of his unfinished meal as he passed the trash. New York taps always took a little while to warm up, so he stood with his hands braced on the rim of the sink, looking down into the swirling drain. Waiting. How was it that he always felt like he was _waiting_, even though he never stopped _moving_?

Peter ran through the motions of washing dishes on automatic, his mind elsewhere. He understood now what Dr. Pym meant about temptation. The risks of altering the timeline just barely edged out the rewards by a paper-thin margin. Self-preservation wasn't stopping him, for all he knew he was bound for non-existence with each additional blip.

The future was, by many accounts, bleak. But what if in trying to fix things Peter only made them worse? He knew himself and ultimately, he didn't have the stomach for the potential consequences of such decisions. Did that make him a coward?

Peter dried his hands and turned back to the living room, where Quentin sat unmoving on the couch. His expression was foggy, eyes glazed as some deep mire of sadness dragged him from the waking world. The sound of Peter's footsteps seemed to rouse him from his apathetic stupor and he looked up, meeting his eye.

The eyes he adored weren't bright anymore. It was like staring into the sea, all froth and gray skies overhead. They could still drown him, but it wouldn't be half as enjoyable.

"You're going to leave, aren't you."

Quentin's words cut through the air and grounded themselves painfully in Peter's heart. That they were a statement, not a question, twisted the invisible blade deeper between his ribs.

Denial sat heavy in the back of his throat, but he couldn't bring himself to offer that much false hope. At that moment, looking at Quentin, he wished more than anything that he could say "no." No, he would say, I'm not going anywhere. I'll stay here with you.

Oh, god.

Peter inhaled sharply.

He wanted to _stay_.

The realization gripped him and dragged him across the room, until he had Quentin's head cradled between his palms.

"Not yet." he assured fervently. "I'm not gone yet."

"But you will be."

Peter made a wounded noise and pushed into Quentin's space, sinking down into his lap. He kissed him, fingers pressed to his scalp and palms against his cheeks, trying to convey every word he couldn't say aloud. Again and again he kissed him, heartbreakingly tender, the full weight of his body leaned against his. A tear slid down his cheek as finally, _finally_, Quentin kissed him back.

Perhaps Dr. Pym had been wrong and he wasn't vibrating through time, but through realities. Maybe this New York in all its wrongness wasn't really his New York at all. It would make sense, if only to explain how the man in his arms could possibly become the vengeful spirit haunting his memories.

Huge hands slid up his back, palms hot through his thin shirt. Quentin held him like if he squeezed too tight Peter might shatter in his arms. His gentility was almost painful. If time was to be believed then those same hands would orchestrate a symphony of lies and agony which would linger in his psyche. A constant reminder of his own weakness.

Quentin sighed into his mouth and kissed the tears from his cheeks, touching their foreheads together before he kissed him again. Peter breathed "Quin..." between their lips and was rewarded with arms tight around him. Beck held a gun to his head, finger on the trigger. They couldn't be the same man. They _couldn't _be.

But what if they were?

Overwhelmed once again by the concept and magnitude of the future, Peter locked his arms around Quentin's shoulders and pressed his face to his neck to weep. He wished that this would never end. Not this specific moment, with it's tears and uncertainties, but _this_. Quin in his arms, the both of them safe within the four walls of his Manhattan apartment.

Much like his crying spell, it couldn't last.

Peter lifted his head and wiped his eyes.

"How about a shower?"

Quentin made a non-commital noise. _I don't want to leave you_, he said without words, and Peter heard him anyway.

"C'mon." he prompted gently. "We'll take one together."

Up, they coaxed themselves, meandering from the couch and down another hall where an open door led into a dim bedroom. There weren't any National Geographic cutouts tacked along the walls of this bedroom, but there was still a table against one wall covered in the intricate pieces and delicate tools used to craft models and miniatures. A skeleton of some unfinished project laid there, collecting dust, the penciled outline annotated by Quentin's own neat writing still beside it.

Peter could have lingered, eyes drifting across the minutiae of Quentin's private space, for hours if left to his own devices, but didn't. The state of the room spoke too loudly to the landscape of its owner's mind and though by now he understood, without the words ever being said, just how hollow Quentin was inside... He didn't need to see it spelled out before him. Not more than it already had been.

Both closet and bureau stood mostly-opened, door ajar and drawers left only sort of pushed in, as if closing them fully was too much effort. A flash of red peeking out from the back of the closet caught Peter's eye and he stepped around Quentin to look more closely. He shoved aside the other garments and pulled a familiar hoodie free of its hanger.

The logo had faded over the years and the fabric was softer, more well-worn than Peter remembered it. But it was the same hoodie. The one Henrietta Beck handed him to change into, the one she'd bought her son because she was _positive_ he'd be going to MIT. He probably had. He'd probably worn this hoodie on campus and thought of his mother.

Maybe once or twice, he'd thought of Peter too.

He thumbed the old hoodie fondly and glanced up.

"Do you mind if I...?" he asked.

Quentin shook his head.

The bathroom had two lights, one bright and the other a more ambient gold. Peter chose to leave only the second on. He stripped down as Quentin shut the door and shuffled over to the claw foot tub, beginning to fuss with the knobs until water spilled from the wide showerhead. Soon, steam billowed from the cascading waterfall in great clouds, muddling the air with thick haze. Peter tugged the hem of Quentin's shirt upwards and helped him undress, though he could have done it on his own.

It's a scalding shower, the best kind to take on a chilly day when the world is colder than temperatures alone. With the shower curtain drawn, the world shrank to a dim bubble, lit by faint amber from behind the curtain and the city lights sparkling through the frosted glass window on their right. On the window ledge were bottles and soaps, a washcloth and two loofahs.

For a moment, Peter just watched the water pouring down over Quentin's body. He had lost some of his muscle definition and hadn't bothered to groom his body hair recently, but he was merely unkempt, not filthy. And despite the physical signs of his emotional decline, Peter still thought he was beautiful. In all the ways that ruins of temples and cracked artifacts were; broken and forgotten, but still _there_.

Still alive, with a heart that thudded beneath the palm Peter laid against his chest. On another day, in another year, standing in this shower together would lead somewhere much different. Passion would burn his fingertips, like electrical currents running along his nerves each time he touched Quentin's skin. The water would be their sheets and the steam, incense; the slick tiles a cool balm on their backs as their body heat rose.

Peter ran his hands down the length of Quentin's torso, palms flat and fingers splayed. A spark of desire fluttered in his belly, but was left only to flicker without becoming a blaze. He wanted him, in that he was fairly certain he would _always_ want Quentin Beck; just not in this moment.

The soap Peter picked up smelled like oatmeal and honey. Quentin reached for the washcloth, but it was snatched away before he could pick it up. Peter guided him back, fingers on his ribs, until they were both beneath the falling spray. He pressed the soapy washcloth to the curve where Quentin's shoulder met his neck and began to rub in small, gentle circles.

The circles traveled down across the strong line of his clavicle, over each of his shoulders, and widend purposefully across his chest. Water ran in rivers down Quentin's body, washing away the sudsy trail left by Peter's ministrations. He paid special attention to the forest of dark hair on his torso, trailing down his belly to his pelvis. Quentin lifted a hand, but without the conviction to follow through whatever action he'd started it only hovered. Peter kissed his shoulder. The hand dropped.

Peter lathered the washcloth with soap again and continued down, following the trail of fur between his legs to stroke over his flaccid cock. A shaky exhale shivered from Quentin's chest. Peter kissed his neck, pressing his nose to the tick of his pulse. Words rested heavy on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed and caged them between his ribs before they could fracture the fragile present.

Quentin turned around with little prompting. Tension coiled tight in the muscles of his back, locking him into his listless posture. Peter dug his thumbs into the base of his skull and dragged downward, pressing hard between his shoulder blades. He followed the flow of his spine, then fanned out, applying pressure and kneading muscle until it began to loosen. He felt Quentin's chest expand and contract with little breaths and sighs, but the sound was lost beneath the fall of water on tile.

Washing Quentin's hair brought other noises, ones Peter heard over the shower. A throaty rumble and a breath shaped around his name as he scraped his nails against his scalp. He coaxed the tangles from his hair as he worked conditioner through the thick locks, marveling at how long it had gotten. As Quentin rinsed, Peter pressed fond lips to the space between his shoulder blades.

The steam began to clear once they shut off the shower and stepped from the tub onto a soft bath mat. As he toweled off, Peter checked the shelf above the toilet and the medicine cabinet for shaving cream and a razor. He found them, set them out by the sink, then hopped up onto the counter beside them. He beckoned Quentin over, spreading his knees to make clear where he was meant to stand. Even though he knew he would come, rest hands on his thighs and stand unquestioningly right where he wanted him, Peter's heart still soared when he _did_ it.

Ned's father was the one to teach him how to shave. It was one of those little things that were meant to be passed from father to son ( or uncle to nephew ) that Peter lost with his family. Mr. Leeds never made a point to specifically include him when he showed Ned, it was just that Peter was there, because he was family too.

The skin of Quentin's neck was still warm and damp. Peter pressed his thumb to the dip just below the sharp curve of his jaw and he tipped his head back, offering his throat. A dizzying pulse of want and affection blistered through Peter's chest. It had never occurred to him how _trust_ could be an aphrodisiac. He steadied himself, breathing deeply, and slid his hand back to cradle the nape of Quentin's neck. The trimmers in his other hand began to hum when he switched them on.

As a sculptor shaped marble with a chisel and hammer, Peter carved away the excess to reveal Quentin's striking features beneath. First the corded tendons of his neck, his full adam's apple. Then his jaw, shaped with only enough curve so that he was not made purely of jagged lines. His cheeks, less full than Peter remembered, now marked with prominent cheekbones.

He set aside the trimmers and rubbed his thumbs over the short bristles left on Quentin's jaw. Their eyes met and for the first time, Peter saw a glimmer of the man he knew in his gaze. Just a faint sparkle around his irises, breathing enough life back into him that it was impossible to look away. Blindly, he reached for the taps on the sink and turned them until the water ran hot.

Peter lathered gel into foam between his hands and smoothed it over what scruff was left. He rinsed his hands and shook them dry, then returned one to the back of Quentin's neck. With the other, he lifted the slim razor. The head rested against the base of Quentin's throat, a whisper of danger in the small blades pressed to bare flesh. Peter drew them up, held the blade beneath running water, then pressed the razor to his skin again.

Each stroke became slow and purposeful, as careful as if the wrong touch could truly slit his throat. The razor posed no more danger than a papercut, yet Peter felt the weight of it as a knife held to vulnerable flesh. He treated it the same.

A hand towel hung from a small hook in the wall. Peter took it and wet one corner to wipe away the excess foam, then used the rest to pat the skin dry. He curled his fingers under Quentin's chin, quietly thrilled when he was permitted to turn his head this way and that without resistance. Peter smiled with satisfaction; he had been thorough and not missed a single spot.

He let go Quentin's chin, only to reach up with both hands and push the damp hair back from his forehead in a facsimile of the combed back style he preferred to wear it. Without his beard, with his hair back, he looked younger. Livelier.

Peter smiled.

"Hi." he breathed.

The corner of Quentin's mouth ticked up.

"Hello."

Peter wasn't sure who kissed who. It didn't matter.

They redressed in comfortable clothes; sweatpants and a loose shirt for Quentin, the hoodie and a pair of shorts for Peter. If the hoodie hadn't still been so big on him, it would have been obvious how the bottoms hung low on his hips.

A thought flitted into Peter's mind as they made their way to the bedroom. He exclaimed "oh!" and squeezed Quentin's hand, halting them both.

"The menorah," he said. "We should light it, right?"

That seemed correct, though his knowledge of Hanukkah was admittedly limited. He became less sure of his question when Quentin stared at him blankly, blinking without comprehension. It lasted all of ten seconds before the hand in his clenched down, then loosened.

"...Yeah. We should."

So, they did.

There was a pack of matches beside the menorah, which Quentin used to light the centermost candle. He paused then, fingertips barely brushing the waxy base, and stared at the flame. Unsure what to do besides _be_ there, Peter rested his cheek against his shoulder and watched the flickering light with him.

After a pregnant moment, Quentin sucked in a shuddering breath. Then, he opened his mouth and started to _sing_.

It was soft, not in nature but by the virtue of how quietly Quentin sung. The melody wrapped itself around harsh sounds from the back of his throat at the end of words pulled from time-honored traditions. Peter understood none of it, he didn't need to. He could hear the sorrow tingeing the edge of Quentin's voice and feel the weight of years he'd spent reciting this same song as he lit the candles.

Each wick took the flame, passing its brightness unto themselves until three more candles burned brightly on the mantle. The fourth returned to its place at the center of the array, where it burned brightest of all. Quentin sang and squeezed Peter's hand, and Peter tried to remember how to breathe. Henrietta smiled at them from her photo beside the menorah and for a moment, the world felt safe.

They left the candles to burn themselves out and finally returned to Quentin's bedroom.

It was dark enough by then that Peter could only make out shapes and shadows as they settled into bed. He saw, or at least thought he saw, the outline of the Millenium Falcon mounted on a shelf not far from Quentin's bed. Curiosity tugged at him. Could it be, maybe, that it was the same Falcon they'd built together all that time ago? Did Quentin keep it close, even now?

He didn't ask. The bed was warm and smelled of Quentin, coaxing Peter down amidst its pillows and downy comforters. Rosemary leapt lightly up onto the bed, watching them patiently until they arranged themselves, before prowling the edge of mattress in search of her desired place. She pawed daintily at the spot she selected, just behind Peter's shoulders, and curled up with her tail over her nose.

Quentin coiled his arms around Peter tightly and tucked his face under his chin, breathing in against the hollow of his throat. Peter tossed a leg over Quentin's waist and curled himself around him, as if he could shield him from the world just by holding him close enough. His fingers worked into his hair, still a little damp, but silky enough to slip his fingers through now.

They laid in silence for a while.

"You used to have stars on your ceiling." Peter murmured.

Quentin hummed.

"I liked them a lot. I wish..."

He trailed off.

It wasn't fair.

Falling asleep beside someone you cared for was meant to be warm and happy, not feel like a knife twisted into your heart. It was almost cruel of him, it felt, to let them both drift off like this. Quentin would wake up alone, Peter gone, and they would both ache with the memory of this embrace. Wasn't that why he had left, last time? To spare them from _this_?

Damned if they did, damned if they didn't. Damned if they kept hurtling towards the inevitable, one of them all too aware how awful the collision was going to be.

Peter pressed a kiss to the crown of Quentin's head and squeezed his eyes shut. He willed himself to sleep, yearning for a dreamless slumber.

* * *

He woke in the lab, staring up at the impassive ceiling.

"Welcome back, Pe- What are you _wearing_?"

Dr. Pym sounded baffled, and behind his question came others from Scott, and Hope, and Janet. Other voices Peter didn't recognize spoke as well, or maybe he did know them, he couldn't be sure. It all blotted together into a tangled mess of words and white noise.

A tear rolled down his cheek. His breath hitched.

Peter rolled over on his side and curled his arms around himself, clutching at the fabric of the old, worn out MIT hoodie, and cried.


	8. Part 7

Peter blinked and the world was different. A blip came and went in less time than it took to inhale and with just as little fanfare. He exhaled vapour into the frosty midmorning air.

Maybe this was how the universe chose to apologize for killing him twice. In the scheme of things, a painless disintegration into non-existence wasn't so bad.

Without pain and discomfort to judge by, there was no frame of reference for how far he'd traveled. This could have been anywhere, in any time period. But it wasn't.

It was New York City, circa 2023. A year and a lifetime ago.

This was the city Peter remembered, the one waiting just outside Dr. Pym's lab. Since he'd seen it last the streets had been cleared and sidewalks cleaned. Fresh flowers and new trees filled once-empty plots. Shops stood open, people walked with their eyes forward, and in the distance a Christmas jingle played.

The city breathed. Unsteadily, the air still rattling in its lungs like pennies in a beggar's cup, but it _breathed_ again. When last he'd walked these streets, the stillness had been suffocating. New York wasn't meant to come to a screeching halt and linger in a monochromatic limbo, strangled by the sorrow of its occupants. In its own way, it was alive, resurrected from the ashes just like the rest of them.

Or it would be, soon.

They all would be.

No one knew it was coming.

The inevitability nipped at the back of Peter's neck. He could feel the future in his periphery like a physical thing his spider-senses could warn against. The battlefield beckoned like a yawning abyss, promising one last cataclysm before the end.

The people weaving their way around him were none the wiser. They had all moved on already, piecing their lives back together from the debris. If they hadn't yet, they were trying to.

Peter stood, burdened by knowledge, as alone in a crowd in this time as he was in his own.

Scott and Hope crossed his mind. Peter hadn't known them before the Snap, but in the aftermath he came to consider them... Well, friends. And he knew that right now Scott was trapped in the Quantum Realm, away from his daughter and holding the key to the future. Stuck, helpless, and completely unaware of the passage of time.

And then he thought of Thor, reduced to a melancholy shadow of himself in some far off corner of the world. Captain Rogers, too, running on steam and scraps of hope until the fire inside him finally burned out. Hawkeye, who coped with loss through violence and isolation, unaware that he was soon to lose his closest friend.

Here Peter was with the power to prevent all of it with a single step forward. So what did he have to lose? Did it even matter, with so much to gain? Only his imminent erasure from the passage of time awaited him, and he'd already accepted that. He might as well go out a hero.

What about Morgan? She'd be just barely four now. A bubbly little girl preparing for Christmas with her parents, unaware this was the last she'd share with her father.

It wasn't right. It wasn't _fair_.

Peter knew where the Avengers compound was. Even without his tech, it wouldn't take long for him to get there. _Someone_ had to be around and if no one was, then he'd go to the Stark cabin instead. He could explain everything, tell the Avengers what went right and what went wrong. They could _fix_ things!

All he had to do was tear one final, massive hole in the timeline.

Peter Parker stood, stared at the sky, and thought of changing the future of the universe. He considered it.

And then, the thought passed.

The people he'd lost were scars on his heart, not open wounds. There was no denying the ache of their absence, but it was a selfish reason to jeopardize the entire universe. If he really wanted to, Peter was sure he could convince himself of his own rightness and go through with his hairbrained scheme. Hope could blind like that.

Maybe with a different opponent, with lower stakes, Peter would have risked it all. If only their chances of victory had not already been so slim, then maybe...

But there was already a future waiting for him, one where he lost more than he gained, but lived despite it. And that had to be enough.

Peter smiled at the horizon sadly, then turned and slipped into the crowd of passing strangers.

His feet carried him down a familiar avenue, past a grocery store he hardly recognized without solemnity hanging over it. Lively holiday decorations littered the front windows, spilling over into the shop fronts neighboring them until the street became a long string of tinsel and merriment.

An echo of sorrow lingered in the faded signage of stores left abandoned, their windows boarded and lifeless. Not all evidence of the Snap could be smothered by festoons of holiday greenery, but New York was certainly _trying_. And no matter how excessive it may have seemed, the glittering display of cheer had the desired effect.

People were _smiling_ again. A little girl giggled in her mother's arms, a pair of brothers heckled each other as they strolled down the street. The somber quiet had broken and the world shone with color again. Peter smiled too, hands stuffed into his coat pockets, drinking in the calm before the end.

He remembered the way to Quentin's apartment like he remembered how to get to school in the mornings, when he was half-asleep and running on muscle memory. If he closed his eyes and let his feet carry him through the city, he'd still find his way there, as if he'd done it a hundred times before. Like there was a compass in his chest and his true north was Quentin Beck.

And he wondered what that said about him, that he was _choosing_ to go to Quentin rather than do anything else. Either it was proof he was finally moving on, or evidence that he'd completely given up. He wasn't sure which.

There was a man sitting behind the once-vacant front desk of Quentin's building, yet another change from his last visit to New York. He looked up when Peter stepped into the atrium and smiled politely, tipping his head in a friendly nod.

"Good afternoon, sir. May I ask who you're here to see?"

"Quentin Beck," Peter said. "Tell him it's Peter, please."

"Just a moment."

The doorman picked up the receiver of a nearby phone and dialed the intercom for the apartment where Quentin resided. Peter waited patiently, his hands in his coat pockets.

"Yes, sir, he said his name was Peter." There was a pause, then the doorman looked up again. "Sign in first, then you can go on up."

He obliged the request with his name, written in his usual chicken scratch script. The time and date column gave him pause and he hesitated, deliberating what to do. In the end, he scribbled illegibly for both, which would have to do.

Peter hadn't noticed the windows along one side of the stairway, last he was here. Sunlight filtered through the clouded glass, dappling the tile in pale, foggy yellow.

He took the stairs one at a time, hand on the banister, climbing steadily. Then, he was taking the stairs two at a time, then three, and then he found himself bounding up the steps. Uncontained excitement glittered in his ribcage, all bright like a sparkler at midnight, urging him faster and faster until he arrived at the appropriate landing.

As though his very presence had been sensed ( or maybe it was his rapid footfalls mounting the stairs, ) the door to Quentin's apartment swung open the moment he laid eyes on it. And there, in the doorway, stood Quentin Beck himself.

"Peter," he breathed. Like the air had been punched out of him, like Peter's name was something sacred, like _oh my god it's you_.

The distance between them shrank until the toes of Peter's shoes threatened the apartment threshold. They paused there, openly assessing each other with critical, eager eyes. Similarities and differences from last they'd seen each other, all cataloged in a stare and filed away in their memory.

"Well, fuck," Quentin chuckled, almost breathless. "Merry Christmas to _me_."

Peter barked a startled laugh.

"You're _Jewish_!"

And then Quentin beamed, which was crooked and gorgeous on his bearded face, and it would've been a crime if Peter _didn't_ kiss him. So he did. Of course he did.

It was the best feeling in the world. Kissing him again made up for every inevitable thing looming on the horizon. For this moment, none of it mattered; not the fighting or the losses, not blipping and its consequences, not even the dreadful unknown of his own fate. He was _here_ with Quentin, in this very moment, and everything was fine.

Peter allowed himself to forget.

Quentin swooped an arm around his back and dragged him into the apartment. He returned the kiss enthusiastically, groaning when Peter's teeth dug into his bottom lip. The door slammed shut with Quentin trapped between it and the young man in his arms, who arched up on his toes to press flush against his front.

Absently, Peter fumbled for the lock, though most of his focus diverted to the hands sliding around his waist and down to cup his rear. He gasped, surprised and delighted, when the hands gave a firm squeeze.

The lock clicked shut. Quentin sank slightly, open palms sliding down Peter's thighs to grip and hoist him up off the floor. Their kiss broke to bright laughter, the sound of joy overflowing from smiling lips. Growling playfully in response, Quentin's teeth found their way to the bits of exposed skin nearest his mouth, nipping with each giggle.

He pushed off the door and started down the hall, unencumbered by the weight in his arms. Peter wrapped his legs around his middle and cupped his cheeks, drawing Quentin into another kiss, this one deeper and better than the first.

They parted breathless, cheeks pinkening.

"Missed you, Quin." Peter breathed.

Quentin exhaled a wounded noise into the space between them, lifting his face to press their foreheads together.

"I missed you too, daydream. So _fucking_ much."

A water balloon of adoration burst in Peter's chest. He dove down and locked their lips together again, trying to spill the emotion welling inside him into the one he felt it for.

The hold on his thighs tightened, fingers pressing appreciatively into firm muscle. And trusting that grip implicitly, Peter let go of Quentin's neck and shrugged off his coat. Where it ended up was anyone's guess; he tossed it vaguely away from them, so it would stop impeding their closeness.

Next thing he knew they were descending; onto the couch, he realized, as his legs were caught between the cushions and Quentin's back. He had to pull away to rearrange himself onto his knees, but all that did was give the clever lips occupying his own a chance to move down along his jaw.

"Shit, Peter," Quentin breathed, his hands spread wide over the small of his back, sunk under the hem of his over-large shirt. "You're freezing."

"Walked here." he explained in an exhale tinged with lust, as teeth skated the sensitive skin below his ear.

Peter fisted both hands in Quentin's thick hair and dragged him back, dropping his open mouth onto the prominent jut of his adam's apple. He felt, more than heard, the rough moan he earned when he sucked harshly on the skin beneath his teeth. Each subsequent bite led his mouth up, from throat, to jaw, to the shell of Quentin's ear.

"Warm me up, baby?"

The sound Quentin made in answer was obscene.

Blunt nails dragged trails of red down his back and Peter arched. Again he latched his mouth to Quentin's neck, lavishing attention wherever his teeth and tongue could reach. The thought to _mark_ crossed his mind in a wave of primal instinct.

Why not? What consequence would one small selfishness have, really? They'd fade and leave no evidence but the memory. Peter dug his teeth in deeper and sucked hard on the flesh between them, now determined to leave his brand.

Quentin's hands were restless, spreading and flexing along his back before one finally slid down past the loose waistband of his jeans. This time, Peter anticipated the squeeze. A low swear flexed Quentin's throat, shifting Peter's jaw as he sucked another mark. He rocked his hips pointedly and the hand on his ass tightened in reflex.

"_God_, I wanna fuck you so bad," Quentin breathed, his voice husky. "Never forgot how you looked riding me, daydream; all blissed out and _gorgeous_-"

With a lewd pop, Peter leaned back to examine his handiwork. Bruises littered skin like wildflowers in a garden, the same shade of purple-red.

"Can we?" he asked, eagerly.

Quentin laughed shakily.

"Wasn't quite _that_ prepared for you to show up out of the blue."

"Oh."

"No need to pout, Peter," he grinned. "There's more to sex than just fucking."

Peter laughed as he was tipped back onto the couch, squirming to kick off his shoes. He continued giggling as Quentin crowded over him, beard rubbing his cheek.

When he reached for him, he found the hem of Quentin's shirt had ridden up, leaving his fingers to press against warm skin. Soft hair greeted his curious fingertips, the gentle give of healthy skin under pressure alighting a tongue of flame in his belly. He gripped the shirt and tugged insistently.

"_Off_." he demanded.

"Impatient, are we?"

Rather than reply, Peter slotted his knees around Quentin's thigh and rocked pointedly upwards against it. He rolled upwards again, grinding purposefully, as he felt the breath of the man above him hitch.

Quentin growled and sat back on his heels to divest himself of his shirt. Peter propped himself on his elbows to watch. Gone were the jagged edges and sallow skin, this was closed to the figure of the man seared into his psyche from their first night together. Broader, fuller, and flush with life.

"Look at you," he breathed, skimming his fingers through the trail of fur on Quentin's stomach. "Fucking stunning, Quin."

A sharp inhale and his belly jumped, tightening and relaxing with a sound too shaky to be a chuckle.

"Look better than last time, don't I?"

Something like a shamed grimace passed over Quentin's face.

"You shouldn't have had to see me like that..."

"_Hey_." Peter frowned.

He sat up, hooking his fingers into Quentin's belt loops and dragged him forcibly closer. Chastely, he feathered kisses from his mouth, down his chin to his chest, pressing a last lingering kiss just over his heart.

"I'm glad I was here." he murmured.

"Peter-"

"No, shut up. I hate... I hate thinking of you _alone_ like that. I hate knowing I wasn't here to help."

"You _were_ here, though." A hand carded through curls. "Saved me again, just when I needed you."

Peter looked up, leaning faintly into the hand stroking his hair.

How could he explain that yes, he was here, but also _no_, he _hadn't_ been? Out in the ethos there was a different reality wherein Quentin Beck sat alone in the dark after the Snap. No one came to tend his aching soul, no one noticed as his humanity shed like snakeskin. There had been Rosemary and silence, and a world left devoid of joys. It wasn't this reality, but at one time it _had_ been.

A spacetime that both existed and didn't, a parallel universe where he'd never begun to blip- The very thought made Peter's heart ache as if he were being speared through. It must have shown on his face, because Quentin kissed him softly and pushed him back down against the cushions.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories, beautiful," he sighed against Peter's lips. "Forgive me?"

"_Always_."

The naked truth of that statement momentarily floored him. There had been no hesitation; not a "yes" or a deflection, but _always_.

Quentin smiled.

"God, I love you."

Peter couldn't _breathe_.

Quentin kissed him, open mouthed and hungry, and he arched up into it with every inch of himself. Thoughts swirled mist-like in his head, all vibrant emotions and brilliant, unnameable colors. He forgave Quentin Beck. He was loved by Quentin Beck. He-

"I love you," he panted into their kiss. "_So much_, Quentin."

Peter's shirt slid up over his head. He flicked it carelessly from his arms and reached for thick, russet hair again.

The way Quentin dragged his hands down his torso felt like an artist searching the planes of his masterpiece for imperfections. And he found none, even as he dug his fingertips into his soft belly and pressed his thumbs to the divots of his hips. Peter rolled his body up to meet the harsh touches, sighing and moaning with each new bruise that threatened his flesh.

Quentin ground his hips down against his thigh, prompting him to lift his knee and rub purposefully. He swallowed the guttural sound of pleasure his beloved made in response, licking into his mouth to chase the taste of it.

The friction between them became a single sinuous movement. They were of the same mind, consumed by a need to relearn the slow rise and euphoric tipping point of the other. Maybe it had only been days since Peter last touched the man above him, maybe months, but for Quentin it had been _years_.

Quentin caged him in with elbows on either side of his head and dropped their foreheads together. Peter let his mouth go slack, panting wetly as the hard line of Quentin's dick dragged against his thigh. Denim did nothing to obstruct the heat of his arousal, or how he could _feel_ when his cock jumped.

He tipped his head back, crown bumping the arm of the couch, and luxuriated in the sensation. What felt like molten metal began to trickle from the back of his skull down his spine. The slow drip of heat into his belly could have simmered to a boil over the course of hours for all he cared.

His hands slid up Quentin's sides, hooking under his arms to grip his shoulders. Then, there were firm fingers flexing around his cock and Peter made a noise of drunken exaltation.

"That's it, beautiful," Quentin purred. "You just relax and let me take care of everything."

Dimly, Peter was aware of the loss of weight on his thigh. His beloved hovered over him, knees astride his hips, deftly working his rough palm around his sex. A simple touch should not have robbed him of all sense, and yet.

"_Quin_," he moaned, the name drawn out in a long breath.

"Yeah?" came a lazy chuckle. "Something you need?"

Peter rocked his hips fitfully before regaining control of his own hands. Loathe as he was to release Quentin, he spared the moment to shove his jeans and briefs down. Lust hazy blue eyes trailed along the exposed flesh of his stomach to where the head of his prick peeked out of Quentin's fist.

"Fuck, _Peter_-"

His head fell back again, pressing into the cushions beneath him as his body bowed upwards. Nails bit and dragged across the tender flesh of his lover's spine. Breathy moans became ragged gasps of _Quin_ and _yes!_

A guttural hiss escaped his teeth, the pad of Quentin's thumb a dizzying rotation across his leaky slit. No matter how badly Peter wanted this to _last_, the insistent pressure of Quentin's grip threatened to undo him with every stroke. His thighs shook, toes curled, his voice edged close to cracking with each exclamation.

Quentin's eyes were fixed on him, pupils blown wide. Senseless platitudes and sweetnesses spilled from his lips like honey, dripping with such thick desire that Peter could feel it slide down his throat. Then his voice dropped into a rumbling growl and he commanded;

"Cum for me, daydream."

He did. Breath choked from his lungs, body drawn tight, light arcing across his vision, orgasm crashed over him all at once. He spilled into Quentin's fist, over his rough fingers, dripping onto his own shaking belly. Cascading waves of euphoria washed through him, relaxing his muscles until he slumped back on the couch.

Quentin released his softening prick, brushing his knuckles gently across the sensitive mound. Peter's hips twitched up and he whined.

"Quin..."

"Yeah? What do you need, gorgeous?"

"Gimme kisses."

"Demanding." he laughed.

Peter smiled lazily and craned his neck to meet the shower of kisses raining down on his face. He was still floating, focus narrowed to his beloved above him and the rest of the world hazy by comparison. Quentin still held himself up on his knees, but a quick exploration down to his tented jeans promised that Peter was more than welcome to return the favor.

A plaintive meow sounded from just beside them.

Peter turned his head and found himself almost nose to nose with Rosemary, Quentin's notch-eared black cat. Apparently, they'd been so absorbed in their activities that they'd missed her approaching the couch altogether. She stood with her forepaws on the cushions, observing them with the vague disinterest of a feline.

She gave a second meow, then rubbed her forehead against Peter's shoulder.

"Aww," he cooed, twisting his arm so he could reach up and scratch behind her ears. "You remember me, Rosie?"

"You're hard to forget, Peter." Quentin said with fond exasperation. "Can I _help_ you, madame?"

Rosemary looked up and meowed for a third time, as if this were a conversation she were participating in. There was a few seconds where cat and owner simply stared at one another before understanding appeared to dawn on Quentin.

"Oh it's _dinnertime_," he gave an exaggerated sigh. "I'm _so_ sorry."

"Hey!"

Peter's hands flashed out, catching Quentin's belt loops as he stood. He hauled himself upright, tugging until he stumbled back over between his knees.

"What about your turn, huh?"

"I can wait."

"_Quin_," Peter whined.

"Hey," Quentin soothed, prying the hands from his jeans. He kissed Peter's knuckles. "You're here for a few hours, yeah? Like always?"

Startled, Peter could only nod dumbly in answer. _Like always?_ Had Quentin kept track of how long they saw one another, over the years?

"Then we have time. Go hop in the shower. I'll feed the beast and put on some coffee."

They... had time?

The concept struck Peter as bizarre. Lately, he always felt like he had everything _but_ time, especially with his love. He blipped more often than he stayed sedentary these days, leaving him in a haze, confined to a box. The only escape from his monotony was when he was yanked back, right to Quentin's doorstep.

But by contrast, Quentin had gotten _used_ to Peter blipping in and out of his life. Accustomed enough to their odd meetings that he could say they had a _few hours_, like it was nothing. Like the fact they had any time at all wasn't-

"I love you." Peter blurted.

Quentin's mouth quirked into a lopsided grin.

"Love you too, daydream."

He kissed Peter chastely, then stepped back and patted his thigh to grab Rosemary's attention. She mewed and trotted over, padding along after him towards the kitchen. Peter watched them go, eyes shamelessly drawn to Quentin's ass.

Finding where his clothes ended up took longer than the shower itself. Everything was more or less where Peter remembered it being; he figured no one would mind if he borrowed a washcloth and soap. A few minutes under the steamy spray replenished his energy and settled the ambient tension in his mind.

Like Quentin said, they had time.

He redressed in the clothes he'd arrived in, sans socks and a coat, and ventured back out into the apartment. Still toweling his hair, which had reverted to a mess of curls now it was wet, Peter paused to observe his surroundings. Quentin's apartment was as he remembered it in shape and size, but not in many other ways.

There were photos in frames along the walls and shelves, people he didn't know grinning and laughing out at him from moments caught in time. Heavy winter curtains had been replaced with lighter ones, drawn open on the fading sunlight. The living room furniture had been rearranged, a new cat tree appearing in one corner, and there were plants on almost every table.

Henrietta Beck still sat beside the menorah on the mantle, her frozen smile full of comforting warmth. Peter stopped to smile back at her.

"Hello, Miss Henrietta," he greeted.

His eyes shifted to the menorah. Of the eight candles, six were melted down, their wicks barely exposed. The memory of Quentin's arms around him, deep voice singing low, replayed itself in his mind. He wondered if he'd hear him again tonight, when he lit another candle. He hoped so.

Peter trailed his fingers along the smooth lines and edges of Quentin's home as he wandered towards the kitchen. He passed through the doorway, gaze drawn immediately to Rosemary as she leapt from the tile floor up onto the breakfast table. From there, she sprang up to the windowsill, settling herself statue-like between a pair of sprawling potted plants, which hadn't been there before.

"I take it the offering was to your satisfaction, Miss Rosie?" Peter teased, leaning over to scratch beneath the cat's chin.

A purr began to vibrate her throat as she leaned into his attention, rubbing her cheek into his fingertips encouragingly. Peter grinned, content to continue until he was dismissed. He braced a hand on the table so he wasn't threatening to tip over, feeling paper beneath his palm rather than wood.

It was human instinct to glance down. The same natural curiosity that made one glance at anything slightly out of place, even if it's a pool of water you'd stepped in after dropping ice cubes. A half-second investigation so ordinary to the human condition, it's reflexive.

Peter registered the ink on the papers, but not the patterns they made. He knew blueprints when he saw them, had drawn more than enough of his own to clock them. Their subject took longer to register, the shape familiar, though it took him a moment to place from _where_. And then, he saw it.

It was a drone. It was one of Beck's drones. It was a blueprint, on Quentin's kitchen table, for one of _the drones_.

The world fell out from under Peter Parker the way it always did; all at once, tearing his heart from his ribs, down through his stomach, into the center of the earth.

"You want milk and sugar in your coffee? ...Peter?"

He found his voice lodged somewhere near his windpipes, strangled into a quiet, affectless murmur.

"Quentin... What... What are these?"

"What are-? Oh, that!"

Footfalls approached him, accompanied by a sheepish laugh. Peter was vaguely aware of a mug being set down on the table, not far from his hand.

"That's... something a _little_ insane," Quentin said. "An absolutely crazy plan I hatched, lil' after you last visited."

Arms encircled his waist and warm lips pressed to his neck, trailing kisses affectionately upwards. No sensation accompanied the action, though every sense he had was dialed to eleven. Was it possible to feel so much at once you went numb?

"You- You're going to-"

"Yeah, think so."

Peter's mind raced.

The line he'd drawn between Beck and Quentin, the one he'd never acknowledged, began to blur. Memories of both bled together in his mind as he tried, fruitlessly, to patch the holes in his thoughts with feeble excuses.

How could this be happening? How could this _be_ at all? Beck gutted his psyche and hung him up to bleed like a pig at slaughter; Quentin _loved him_. They couldn't be the same man. It wasn't possible. It wasn't _fair_!

"No!"

He tore himself from Quentin's arms as he whirled around, meeting his startled expression with panic on his face.

"No, Quin, you _can't_!"

"Wh-" Quentin stumbled back a step, beautiful eyes blinking. "I know it's kind of insane, but I thought you'd at least-"

"People are going to get _hurt_! Quin, why would you _ever_-"

"Because the world needs something to believe in!"

Peter stopped, his mouth agape.

"The Avengers are _gone_," Quentin continued. "People need something, some_one_, to believe in again. I can be that! I _have_ the technology _in my head_ to make that happen!"

"What are you...?"

This wasn't right.

Quentin Beck may have talked a good game, even at the end, but there had been nothing philanthropic in his intentions. His words had been; "_People need to believe, and nowadays they'll believe anything._" Nothing in that spoke to a man looking to inspire the people, just someone willing to take advantage of them.

But the sentiments weren't that different. In a way they were the same as Quentin and Beck; the same thing under different circumstances.

Suddenly, Peter could see it all unfolding before him. The beginning of a tragic end.

Quentin, _his Quin_, who was both so strong and so very brittle under the right pressure, didn't know what loomed on the horizon. As he prepared to debut himself as a hero for the world to believe in, the very people he sought to emulate would suddenly reemerge from the shadows en masse. At the forefront, the man who stole his life's work, who he never got an explanation from.

And then, in a single act of unmatched selflessness, that man would sacrifice himself for the entire universe. He would be deified across the galaxy, his name burned into the minds of civilizations they'd yet to even meet.

Then, E.D.I.T.H.

Those _fucking_ glasses.

If Beck had been right about anything, it had been that Peter wasn't the right person to own that technology. Not yet. Why had Mr. Stark given it to _him_? Why not _anyone_ else?!

Quentin would break. The world would have taken one too many things from him, slighted him one too many times. He would crumble, crack, and become cruel.

And there was nothing Peter could do to stop it.

Anguish welled in him like a tormented ghost, howling down the decrepit halls of his soul.

"Peter-? Daydream, why are you crying? What's wrong?"

Their future was set in stone and it ended in tragedy.

"Do you- _Shit_, do you really think I can't-"

"No!" Peter gasped wetly. "No, baby, no, I think you'd be an _amazing_ superhero!"

Quentin reached for him hesitantly and Peter all but collapsed into the hands that came up to frame his face. He became aware of the hot tears rolling down his cheeks, swiped away by his beloved's tender touches. Concern laced the expression of the man who would, not so long from now, fragment his mind into so many jagged pieces.

They were doomed. Both separately and as a whole, they were hurtling towards a collision course with destiny that would mangle them beyond recognition.

_Unless._

"Quin..."

Peter pulled away again, this time to scrub the tears from his cheeks. He looked up at Quentin, his eyes bright, jaw set with determination.

"Quin," he repeated. "If you're going through with this, there's some things you need to know. Things you may not believe, but I swear they're true."

He paused to let these words sink in.

"Do you trust me?"

"Of _course_ I do, Peter."

Peter took a steadying breath.

Which was then harshly driven from his lungs as some intangible force slammed into him with the approximate strength of an atom bomb.

His vision exploded into dots of black and white, obscuring the world in a mess of shifting shapes. Blindly he caught the hands reaching for him as his knees gave out, which was a mistake, because every inch of his skin was an open nerve and touching another human being felt like being on _fire_.

Quentin called his name, but it came to him muffled, like it had been run through several sound filters before hitting his ears. Peter blinked dazedly, trying to focus. Panic began to set in.

What was happening? He'd never felt something like this before. There was something under his skin and it felt like a thousand flies, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. Only smaller, like ants. Like spiders. Like his cells and molecules multiplying and dividing and separating.

Was this a blip? Was this _the_ blip, the one that would erase him from existence? Why did it _hurt_ so much? It wasn't supposed to be like this!

His vision cleared and he could see Quentin again, his eyes wide and afraid, skin pale as chalk.

If this was the end, Peter refused to let it all be for nothing.

"Promise me-" he choked.

"Anything," Quentin's voice, distant and muffled, out of sync with his mouth, said. "_Anything_, daydream!"

"Promise me you won't _hurt_ anyone, Quin."

"Pete-"

"_PROMISE ME!_"

"I swear Peter, I _swear_, I won't-"

The world went up in an explosion of gold fire.

Everything was nothing. It was all black, or maybe white, or maybe there was no color at all and the human mind was not made to process the absence of all things. Peter- was he Peter? Was he _anything_ besides a collection of displaced atoms divided into infinitesimally small pieces and scattered to the wind?

There wasn't any wind. There wasn't any anything. But there as a bit of something and a lot of nothing and-

And it _hurt_.

Agony on a scale Peter never thought he'd experience, pushing his pain threshold so high that it whited out into a numb nothingness just like the world ( was it a world? ) around him.

And then, quite suddenly, he collided with the floor.

There was, as it happened, a floor. One which was hard and cold, which hurt to fall and crack his head on, which did not give under his scrabbling nails.

Peter's ears rang and his vision, spotty and unfocused, tried vainly to make sense of what lay above him. Lights. That _was_ light, wasn't it?

The floor vibrated. Footsteps. People.

Someone grabbed his wrist and he screamed. They let go. He couldn't get his jaw working to tell them he appreciated it- his whole body still felt raw.

More vibrations. More people. A lot of people, their shadows dancing across his mottled vision.

Something blotted out the lights.

He felt- he _felt_ -a sensation he knew, liked, but couldn't name. He was sure he'd felt it before. It was...

His hair.

Someone was stroking his hair.

Someone, the shadow hovering over him, blocking the ceiling, was stroking his hair and murmuring to him over and over again.

The ringing in his ears faded slowly, filtering the world back into focus one noise at a time.

He heard Dr. Pym. Fury. Hope and Scott. People yelling.

And...

"You're fine, Peter, you're fine. You're home. It's okay. Just like I promised, Peter, _it's all gonna be okay_-"


	9. Reassembly Pt1

"Tell me again. About what happened after I left."

* * *

"...ss... Boss. _Beck!_"

"What?!" Quentin snapped and leveled a glare at the man in front of him.

Gutes Guterman appeared unmoved.

"You zoned out again," he accused. "We're five days from launch, we _have_ to get this right!"

"Then go hound Riva, he's the one who hasn't finished rendering the golem."

"_Earth Elemental_! See this is exactly what I mean, you're the one who's going to have to do all the talking and you can't even remember the basics!"

"Everything alright, boss?" interjected the matronly voice of Janice Lincoln.

With a mug of coffee in one hand and a tiny styrofoam plate of donuts in the other, she puttered into view at Guterman's elbow. Quentin couldn't remember who had brought the donuts, or if indeed any of them had. It wasn't uncommon for Janice to materialize with foodstuffs intended for one of her colleagues more prone to forgetting meals, Quentin among them.

"Fine, fine. Just thinking."

"About?" she prompted, setting the coffee and donuts down on his workbench.

"If it's Stark _again_..." warned the distant voice of William Riva, who was across the warehouse, hidden by a bank of computer monitors.

The atmosphere grew heavy as Quentin's expression flatlined.

No, he _hadn't_ been thinking about Tony Stark. Which was a small miracle, in the present day. It was hard to go anywhere without being met by the glaring reminder of both Stark's greatness and his passing. One inspired a familiar poisonous fury, but the other...

Months had passed since Iron Man died, and Quentin still didn't know how to feel about it.

Anger, that was the easiest, but he didn't know what to do with the pain. One would think that at this point he would have either moved on or let go of the "what if's" surrounding Stark and how they'd parted ways. Yet, every new memorial and totem to his memory made old scars ache a little worse.

"I was _thinking_," Quentin intoned pointedly, ignoring the offering of caffeine and sugar in favor of standing. "About the site we picked in Mexico."

The top of Riva's head popped up over the monitors, eyes narrowed behind his thick glasses.

"What about it?" he called suspiciously.

"I was considering changing it."

He wasn't surprised by the looks of disbelief and indignation which met his statement. Five days out from setting a truly massive plan into motion was not the time to be changing a major detail like location, he knew that. The more he thought on it, though, the more it nagged at him.

"_Why_?" Guterman asked his back as he strode between the rows of carefully assembled drones laid out on the warehouse floor. "We scouted that place ages ago!"

"That was before the Dusting was reversed."

"And? Dusting didn't affect geographical layouts."

Quentin cast an exasperated look at Riva, aiming for something less than belittling but still weary enough to come across as an admonishment.

"Yes," he said patiently. "But it changed the population numbers."

"Okay?" Riva said. "So? More people will see your grand entrance, what about it?"

Quentin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"No, William- More people will be _in the line of fire_."

"We knew there would be casualties." Janice frowned.

Riva stood and came around his work station to cross his arms. Quentin sighed and waved a hand, affecting the demeanor of a very patient teacher addressing his class.

"Tell me, what looks better on the front page," He lifted his hands to mime the length of the line in question. "_Elemental Stopped by Mysterious Hero After Killing Dozens_?"

A pause, for effect.

"Or," he gestured again. "_Mysterious Hero Saves Hundreds from Alien Threat_."

He paused again, sweeping his eyes from person to person. No one replied, though Janice hummed thoughtfully and Guterman tapped his precious script against his palm. Riva remained a dissenting voice.

"You're supposed to be making a scene, boss. How exactly are we going to get S.H.I.E.L.D's attention without causing some kind of threat to life?"

"I'm not suggesting we remove the human element entirely, I'm suggesting we're a little more conservative with our numbers."

"And do _what_ instead?"

"Ramp up the lights and drama! Bigger boom, more destruction- Make the Elemental impossible to miss. The threat alone should cause enough pandemonium."

"That could work," Guterman agreed. "We can cut down a lot of the initial dialogue if you're not going to be surrounded by people."

"Quality on the Hero model could go down, if it's going to be seen at a distance," Quentin pitched.

Riva scowled.

"Yeah, and quality on the Elemental has to go _up_ if I'm scaling the damn thing up by three."

"I was thinking four or five."

Riva swore.

"It's not a bad idea," Janice piped up. "Change the movement from random to linear, have the Elemental be heading for the village. It creates an imminent threat while maintaining a heroically low casualty count."

Guterman nodded, already scratching out lines in his script, and Riva grumbled but argued no further. He met Quentin's eye and sighed, accepting defeat, before ambling back behind his tower of monitors to work on the models.

Quentin waited until his team had once again dispersed to exhale a low sigh of relief. A weight lifted ever so slightly from his shoulders.

_You made me promise not to hurt anyone, Peter_, he thought, eyes sweeping over the tens of waiting drones. _I'll do my best._

* * *

Something about the impending ruination of the Moroccan coastline bordered on cruelty. The natural beauty of the crystalline waters and golden beaches framed by pastel seaside townships was breathtakingly simple. It was the kind of place worth fantasizing about running away to, though Quentin was sure that if he ever did, he'd be bored within a week. A life of leisure had never been in the cards for him.

His last communication from S.H.I.E.L.D indicated that their convoy was approximately fifteen minutes out from his present location. Since Quentin Beck, extradimensional soldier, could fly, he'd gone on ahead to scout the area meant for the next Elemental sighting. Or he was meant to be scouting, anyway. In reality, he was drinking in the landscape before making a disaster area out of it.

There were people on the beach. It was a warm afternoon, the night would probably only dip in temperature by a few degrees, and the locals were taking advantage of the pleasant atmosphere. Riva was almost ready to press the button, so to speak, and begin the intro sequence for their cyclone Elemental.

Quentin dragged middle finger and thumb over his eyes and pressed hard between his brows.

Mexico went off without a hitch. He made his entrance, S.H.I.E.L.D grilled him for a few hours, and everything fell into place just how he'd predicted it. There had been some improvisation on the fly, but it worked out in the end. Everything was going according to plan.

Yet, he was uneasy. At first he thought it was the change in timeline; they pushed this second phase off an additional two weeks, having failed to account for exactly _how_ paranoid Nick Fury was in person. The scrutiny would get to anyone. But it wasn't that.

_"Promise me you won't __**hurt**_ _anyone, Quin."_

Peter's voice echoed in his head every time he sat down to strategize with his team. They were meticulous, calculating, they had figures for _everything_, including projected casualties and every number over zero just made Peter's voice louder.

Sacrifices had to be made, that was the nature of heroism. Two people are hanging off a cliff, you can only save one and the other has to fall, which do you pick? How high was the body count hanging over Steve Rogers's head, or Dr. Banner's? Fuck's sake, Black Widow was an ex-Soviet assassin!

_"Promise me!"_

Fucking fuck.

His wire hummed to life in his ear.

"S.H.I.E.L.D's ten minutes out and the projections are all set, boss. Ready on your call." said Riva's voice.

"Heard. Stand by."

"Stand by?"

Quentin watched as a small caravan of people, too far away for him to see clearly, made their way from the beach to the boardwalk. A littering of sunbathing couples and idling families still milled about the edge of the glossy water.

"Just want to time things right." he muttered, compulsively adjusting the monitor on his wrist.

"You're the one who wanted to be a hero, boss. Don't get cold feet about it now."

Quentin snorted, glad his colleagues couldn't see his cynical smile.

There was only one thing he'd ever _really_ wanted, but he couldn't summon up his daydream just by thinking about him. He'd tried.

"Alright, gimme a countdown, Guterman." he rolled his shoulders. "Time to get this show on the road."

* * *

Two months passed in the blink of an eye.

Their financial sponsors doubled, now that their crazy scheme was showing results, and Doug Jones brought a handful of new talent on board. Janice made adjustments to the costume suit according to Quentin's specifications, and with all the new hands the timeline for the practical suit bumped up by several months.

Quentin was especially relieved by this. The sooner he had an actual, working super suit, the better. The Elementals were a marketing scheme meant to launch a heroics career, not carry it indefinitely. Sooner or later, he'd have to do some actual crime fighting, and a costume wasn't going to cut it.

"I can't fucking believe this is going so well," Riva told him one night over drinks.

"Of course it is," Quentin laughed. "_I_ planned it."

* * *

Doug roped Victoria Snow into their operation barely four days later. They celebrated her arrival to the team with a bottle of bourbon and an exceptionally greasy pepperoni pizza. Fifty minutes in, they were all tipsy.

"Hey, Beck," Victoria said, leaning across the table towards him. Her expression had grown serious, the glass in her hand almost empty. "You ever work on the E.D.I.T.H project, when you were with S.I.?"

"Heard about it, didn't work on it. Why?"

"There's this rumor going around that Stark left it to someone."

"What, Fury?"

"_No_! Someone else, some, like, _outsider_."

"I've still got friends at S.I.," Janice piped up, rosy cheeked and leaning against Riva's shoulder. "Want me to ask around about it?"

"Yeah," Quentin said. "E.D.I.T.H's fucking dangerous, we have a right to know who the fuck Stark left that kinda power with."

Janice had an answer for them within a week.

Their goals changed, after that.

* * *

"Parker should be exiting on your right. Doug, you in position?"

"Yes, Guterman. I've been in position for _half an hour_ waiting for this little-"

Quentin cleared his throat loudly, doing his best impression of a suburban white father without any manners. It wasn't a role he took pleasure in, but the Hawaiin shirt just brought it out of him.

Khaki shorts, god. The wardrobe geeks did this on purpose after he requested more detail on the damn cape.

"Sorry, boss," Doug sighed. "Getting a little stir crazy over here. Ready for the big show to start."

"Relax, we're on schedule."

He adjusted the grip on his smartphone, shifting his weight so he stood casually, as if listening to someone on the other end of the line. Behind dark lenses, his eyes scoped carefully over the crowd from his periphery. Any moment now, the kid was going to come wandering out of the money exchange.

Parker's physical description wasn't much to go on. There were a lot of white brunette high schoolers in Venice this time of year, it turned out. It worked in their favor, then, that he was both below average in height and apparently alone. Most of his classmates had paired off.

"Khakis and a blue plaid shirt," Janice had relayed that morning, having been the one to keep eyes on the class's arrival.

"Beck," Guterman said sharply. "On your right."

Quentin fought the urge to turn his head.

From the corner of his eye, he caught the slight figure of a young man with a backpack slung over his plaid shirt. He ducked and weaved through the crowd as easily as a fish through water, like it was second nature to sidestep others.

"I see him," he said, slowly turning to follow the boy's progression out towards the canal.

He turned fully, catching sight of his retreating back, and for a moment his heart stopped.

From behind, Parker's silhouette looked remarkably like his Peter's. Shorter hair. A straighter spine. But his gait, the obstinate curls at his nape-

Quentin shook himself subtly.

He was seeing ghosts again.

* * *

Until, like something out of a nightmare, the ghosts came back to haunt him.

* * *

Quentin left the S.H.I.E.L.D base of operations reeling.

He'd no doubt face a barrage of questions regarding his muted comms and disengaged visuals when he met back up with his team, but that was a problem for later. It was trial enough to keep himself from outright collapsing at the moment.

When Nick Fury informed him that mild-mannered Peter Parker was Spiderman, he'd had to think on the fly. In theory, the plan to obtain E.D.I.T.H was still in play. Convincing a teenage superhero to hand over technology he couldn't possibly handle wouldn't be that much different from convincing a normal teenager.

Absolutely nothing could have prepared him for Spiderman to walk through that archway with his daydream's face.

The next half hour was something of a blur. Quentin experienced things from outside himself, mouth and body moving on automatic while his mind ground to a complete halt.

He couldn't stop staring at Peter Parker. The young man was his daydream in the way that an old photograph is still, technically, yourself. He spoke in Peter's voice, made expressions with his face, but there was no light of recognition in his pretty brown eyes. No cheeky smile on his mouth or gravitational pull dragging them together.

God, he was so smart. Had Peter always been that smart?

Quentin dragged a shaky hand through his hair.

None of this made sense. How could Peter, _his Peter_, be here? Better yet, how could he _be here_ and _not_ be here at the same time? His body had been present, but the soul Quentin knew was nowhere to be found.

Too many questions and not a single answer. Quentin sucked in a breath and rounded the corner, intent on finding his way out of this damnable costume and into the nearest bar to drink himself into a mild stupor, only to stop dead.

Twenty paces from him stood Peter Parker. He looked- Well, he looked winded, and somewhat petrified at the sight of him. Considering he'd left almost an hour ago to return to his classmates, finding him here was... odd.

Stranger still, his suit looked different. And his hair. It was longer, curling freely with little attempt to tame it back into any approximation of a "style", much like-

"_Peter_," Quentin breathed.

He moved, crossing the distance between himself and his daydream with purpose. After how they'd parted ways, he'd feared the worst. Even his lingering confusion could wait a few minutes; long enough for him to get his hands on Peter and reassure himself that he was solid, and real, and _safe_.

But before he could reach him and sweep the beautiful young man he loved into his arms, Peter scrambled upright and sputtered;

"Mr. Beck!"

Quentin's footsteps slowed. His heart sank.

"I, uh..." Peter fumbled. "What are you doing here?"

He'd been wrong. This wasn't his daydream.

Quentin swallowed a mouthful of bile, forcing down the sick feeling of heartache with it.

"I was just heading out," he half-lied, trying to inject some false charm into the shallow excuse.

"Oh, right. Patrolling the city?"

"Something like that."

"Okay! I mean, good, that's good. I was just leaving."

Something wasn't right.

Logic dictated that the simplest answer was the most likely to be true; that this was Peter Parker, Spiderman, the same young man he'd met an hour ago. Perhaps he'd come back to renege his decision not to help with the Fire Elemental.

Yet...

Peter Parker's hair was shorter, of this Quentin was almost sure. His suit didn't have nearly as much black in it. And when he looked at the hero he'd dubbed _Mysterio_, it was with unmasked awe, not thinly veiled fear.

This was all wrong. Whoever this Peter was, he was no more Quentin's daydream than the Peter before him had been. Both were nearly perfect replicas, but not quite. What could it mean? To have multiple versions of the same being crossing in and out of his life, now in quick succession? An answer hovered just out of reach, where he couldn't quite grasp it.

Of one thing he was sure; this changed things. How, he couldn't tell, not yet, but it would. This was Peter, his _daydream_, the boy he'd pined for since the night he found him out in the snow. Above all else, he would always be Quentin's priority.

So he raised a hand, fitting his palm against the familiar plane of Peter's neck, and said;

"Hey, it's all gonna be okay. We're going to be fine."

* * *

Somewhere between Salzburg and Prague, only he and Riva remained awake.

"Let me bounce an idea off you."

"Shoot, boss."

"How about calling it quits after I get my hands on E.D.I.T.H."

Even across the darkened cabin of the private plane, Quentin could see the incredulous look Riva gave him.

"Call it _quits_? You kidding? With the kind of money our sponsors have on the line, they're gonna want that final Avengers-level threat to really make their profit. You're not thinking of backing out of the London job, are you?"

"No," Quentin said, looking out the window at the passing darkness of the night sky. "Of course not."

* * *

"Let's get a drink."

"But, I'm not 21!"

Quentin snorted, an amused smile tugging at his mouth as Peter stumbled after him.

They fell into step. Peter pulled off his makeshift mask and scrubbed at the bird's nest of curls it had left him with. The effort it took not to reach out and help him fix them was extraordinary, though nothing compared to the difficulty of staying in character for the last half hour.

Like its predecessors, the Fire Elemental was a smashing success. The special effects makeup and script completely sold their audience, moment of galant self-sacrifice and all. Under different circumstances, Quentin would feel quite pleased with himself for how the evening was going.

In a little under ten minutes, they'd reach the secondary location his team had selected. There, if all went according to plan, E.D.I.T.H would leave Peter's hands and fall into his own. Which really was for the best; this Peter was many things, but responsible enough for the massive scale of power E.D.I.T.H represented wasn't one of them. He would be one day, most likely, but until then it really did belong in someone else's possession.

The _plan_ was that they would get a drink, have a chat, and he'd get the glasses. Peter would leave, go back to his school trip and have no more involvement with Mysterio. If everything went according to plan, Peter would remain innocent to all of this.

Yet, for the hundredth time in the last twenty-four hours memories of his daydream rewound through Quentin's head. At the end of the reel he saw Peter with wide eyes and fraying edges, disappearing from his kitchen like so much smoke in the wind.

_"Promise me you won't hurt anyone, Quin!"_ the memory of him screamed. _"__**PROMISE ME!**__"_

What would have happened, had he not made that promise?

The attack in Mexico, in Morocco, even in Venice, would have all played out _very_ differently. There would be a body count on his head threatening the triple digits and, for the first time since this crazy crusade of his began, Quentin wondered when he'd become so numb to that idea.

Then, what? He'd find himself here, of course. Playing the role of mentor and hero to a boy who wore his heart on his sleeve. He would take advantage of that, as he was planning to now. Peter would go on his way, no harm done, not to him anyway.

Except that he couldn't get the image of the Peter he met in Venice out of his mind. His eyes, the same lovely shade of mahogany Quentin had come to love, afixed to him with _fear_. The exhaustion lining his face reminded him of the boy he met decades ago on a snowy December night.

With that thought, the pieces began to fall into place.

Though his memories from the time after his mother's death were foggy, he was almost sure that when he gave Peter his name, there had been a moment of hesitation. Then, when their paths crossed a third time he hadn't aged a day. In the aftermath of the Chitauri attack, Quentin accepted the oddity without question. At the time, he was just glad Peter had returned to him at all.

He thought of the night they met, how he found Peter crouched on the frozen mud, sobbing into his arms. At first he'd seemed so small and frail, then as he lifted his head, so beautiful and _broken._ The way he clung to his hand as Quentin led him home and curled into the corner of the kitchen table. As if he were sorry for the air he breathed and the space he occupied.

The young man he'd seen fade into existence in the aisle of a desolate grocery store had seemed so _weary_. By then, Quentin knew Peter, he saw the years etched into his bones, hidden by his youthful face. Something, of which his daydream did not speak, clung to him like an iron weight. It lifted over the years, ever so slightly, as Peter became a constant in his existence.

But he had faced the world after the Dusting with abject numbness. He'd flinched when a hand was offered to help him. When Quentin said _I love you_, he had run.

_Oh, god,_ Quentin thought. _Did __**I**_ _do that to him?_

The answer, he knew, was yes.

"Mr. Beck?"

Quentin stopped walking and grabbed Peter's elbow.

"Follow me," he said with surprising calm. "And act natural."

"M-Mr. Beck, what's going on?"

Quentin reached up and pulled the wire from his ear, dropping it to the cobblestone street. He crushed it beneath his heel.

"I'll explain when we get to the S.H.I.E.L.D safe house."

Peter looked at him, his big brown eyes guileless.

"Okay," he nodded, and trusted Quentin like it was nothing.

* * *

The handcuffs, he expected. The gun too. In fact, the whole thing went precisely how he'd imagined it the night before.

_Like I'd ever actually turn myself in_, he'd lied to himself as he turned over and tried to sleep. But of course he had, it was for the sake of his daydream.

He would've taken the bullet for him too.

Only, Peter stopped Agent Hill from pulling the trigger.

"The only thing crazier than your story is that you're sitting here selling out your whole operation like it's nothing," Fury said. "Why the change of heart, Beck?"

There were a thousand lies he could've told in that moment, many of them may have spared him a prison sentence. For once, Quentin Beck spoke with absolute honesty.

"I didn't want to hurt Peter."

* * *

The team was long gone by the time S.H.I.E.L.D raided their base of operations. Not much was left behind, just a few lonely monitors and a couple take out containers. If he had to guess, they'd already left the country, if not the whole continent.

He was glad, in a way. Some of them were bastards, callous and brilliant, probably safer behind bars, but some of them were alright. Janice didn't deserve prison, or Guterman.

Fury was convinced he'd given them warning before turning himself in, though Quentin confessed that all he'd done was destroy the wire he'd been wearing. Despite his honesty ( which was surprisingly freeing, after months of lies ) S.H.I.E.L.D still interrogated him for almost forty-eight hours straight.

_Where would his team go?_

"Scatter, probably. We didn't share exit strategies, but the fat cats are probably off in the tropics on their yachts."

_What were their plans?_

"After Prague we were going to hit London. Predominantly structural damage, limited loss of life. There's no way they'll go through with it now, there wouldn't be a point."

_How did you intend to keep up this charade?_

"There was a practical suit in the works, it was just easier to launch _Mysterio_ ahead of time and worry about finishing the suit later."

_And where is the suit now?_

"Probably with one of the team. I keyed it to my biometrics, though, so they're not going to have an easy time getting it operational, if they can at all."

And finally;

"Why?"

Peter Parker had come to see him off. They stood on a private airstrip in the chilly pre-dawn breeze, more than six feet separating them. The chains connecting the shackles on his wrists to his ankles clattered as he turned to face the image of his lover, aching to rub the knot of confusion from his brow.

"Why do all _this_, Beck?" he asked. "Why not just become a hero without all the lies and theatrics?"

Quentin exhaled vapor.

"People need something to believe in, Peter," he said. "And it's not easy, trying to fill the Avengers' shoes."

* * *

S.H.I.E.L.D's detention center was more pleasant than prison. Or he assumed it must be, having never been to prison before.

As days slid into weeks, interrogations became more infrequent, until they stopped completely. Neither Fury nor Agent Hill made an appearance, and aside from the twice daily delivery of meals, he was left mostly to his thoughts. It wasn't the worst position he could have been in.

Until, almost a month after he turned himself in, Spiderman stepped through his cell door.

"Hello, Beck," Peter greeted as he removed his mask.

"Peter," he replied, grateful the rasp of his voice could be attributed to disuse.

"One of your old teammates turned herself in. Janice Lincoln."

Quentin kept his expression carefully neutral. He'd never given them names.

"That plan you told Fury about, to attack London," Peter continued. "They're going through with it. Only they've switched the target from London to New York."

"They wouldn't," Quentin said sharply. "That's a high risk target with barely a month of planning, they'd have to be fucking crazy."

"Or desperate," Peter countered solemnly.

His eyes fell to his hands, twisting his mask between them.

"Ms. Lincoln says that after you turned yourself in, they had to scrap the whole European operation. Your, uh, _sponsors_ weren't happy about that. They started putting pressure on the rest of the team to get results anyway, and I guess between that and the money on the table..."

Quentin's heart sank.

"Those fucking _idiots_."

Perhaps because it was Peter standing there and not some faceless member of S.H.I.E.L.D, Quentin found he couldn't be bothered to keep up appearances. He dropped his head into his hands, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his eyes.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked, after a pregnant pause.

"According to Ms. Lincoln... They're still going to use Mysterio. As part of the attack. Since they still have the drones, they can just-"

"Mysterio isn't real," Quentin interjected sharply, raising his head. "He was a gimmick."

"The public doesn't know that," Peter said, frowning. "And I think you're smart enough to know where this conversation is going."

Quentin stared at Peter blankly, unmoving.

"...They're my _friends_."

"And I'm sorry about that, I really am, Beck. But they're choosing to do a bad thing and a lot of people are going to get hurt."

"That has nothing to do with me."

"_You_ set this whole thing in motion!"

"And I've done what I can to put a stop to it! What those morons do next isn't on my head."

Peter stepped right into his space, forcing him up onto his feet to put some distance between them again. There still wasn't much, and seeing him up close made Quentin feel like there was a noose around his neck.

"Mysterio is _you_, Beck," Peter glared. "Not the costume or the fancy tech. They're going to go out there and use _your creation_ to hurt people, _my people_, in my city. You did a lot of wrong, but you always did your best not to hurt people, I know that much."

"You don't know anything about me, Parker." Quentin spat.

"I know you wanted to be a hero," Peter said unflinchingly, looking right through him. "And I know you don't want me to get hurt. So suit up and watch my back, okay?"

* * *

The next day's headline read;

_**Mysterio and Spiderman save New York from Storm Elemental! **_

_**Mysterio to be the newest Avenger?**_

* * *

"You get all that, or should I go over it again?"

The agent patiently waited for Quentin to feel along the metal ring locked around his neck, dipping his fingers under the band experimentally.

Biometric scanners, at least three separate tracking devices, three-sixty microscopic camera views and of course, a lethal anti-tampering mechanism, all packed into a sleek little package. The equivalent of a maximum security blacksite sat locked around his neck, barely heavier than a dog collar.

"I got it."

"Then sit tight for the initial scan and we'll be in business."

There wasn't much for him to do other than sit, but Quentin chose not to point that out. He was conscious of Nick Fury's eye boring into him from the shadows, where he'd positioned himself to be particularly menacing.

"Allow me to remind you," he said, as his agent tapped away on his tablet. "That this whole bargain is contingent on you producing _results_, Beck. I will be keeping a very close eye on you."

"If you think I'm a flight risk, you can scrap this whole idea and toss me back in a cell, Fury."

"I have half a mind to. Unfortunately, you've got too much potential as an asset for me to let you rot in some hole in the ground."

"Are you expecting a _thank you_?"

The tablet chimed.

"And, done!" the agent grinned. "Trackers are live and all functions are responsive. Mr. Beck's all set, Director Fury."

"Congratulations, Beck," Fury said, sarcasm dripping from his tone. "You're _free_."

* * *

Rosemary rubbed against his heels, no more affectionate than if he'd been gone an afternoon, rather than left her with a neighbor for several months. Quentin stooped and picked her up, holding her warm body to his chest as he drifted through his apartment.

It was like he'd never left. His plants in the windowsills, his curtains drawn. Peter's coat, left hanging in his front hallway, and his mother's smiling face on the mantle.

Time passed, and he let his hair grow out. It felt like the thing to do. Purposeful, like saying; _I am changing_.

* * *

The name _Dr. Hank Pym_ caught his attention.

Quentin rolled his chair back from his desk and cocked his head, ears strained. Agent Hill repeated the name as she strode beside Fury, her brow furrowed. Whatever she said next, it didn't make Fury happy.

They ascended the nearby stairs to the upper level, where Fury's glass office sat, taking their conversation with them. Quentin hovered on the edge of indecisiveness, caught between going after them and returning to the prototype drone laying on his worktable.

Over the past few months he'd become quite familiar with the name Hank Pym. As soon as he was released from S.H.I.E.L.D detention, he threw himself into the study of time travel with the enthusiasm of a man obsessed. With nothing to do but think for the month and a half he'd spent in a cell, he'd had plenty of time to put together the last few pieces of the puzzle that was his daydream.

Researching time travel, unlike studying alien life or norse mythology, still mostly yielded results of a fictitious nature. Quentin hadn't allowed that to stop him, eating his way through scientific papers as well as paperback books by one-hit wonder authors. Any information was a scrap of knowledge he didn't have before.

After much searching and many dead ends, he'd found his way to quantum theory, and the lesser works of Dr. Pym. His papers on time travel were purely theoretical, but their basis was sound enough. To Quentin's eye, many of his ideas aligned soundly with the experiences he'd shared with Peter over the years.

He'd yet to decide what to do with this information. Reaching out to Dr. Pym proved to be an easier task in concept than in practice. Apparently, the man had been a fugitive at some point, which made contacting him something of a challenge. So to happen to hear his name now, from the mouths of two people quite a bit more likely to know how to reach him...

Quentin got up and followed.

You didn't need to knock on Nick Fury's office door; he saw you coming. He didn't look pleased by the sight of Quentin standing patiently outside his office, but seemed to decide it was best to let him in rather than prolong the inevitable.

"What, Beck?" he demanded.

"Agent Hill," Quentin greeted with a nod. "Director Fury. I couldn't help overhearing-"

"You could help it if you knew what was good for you."

"I _couldn't help overhearing_ something about Dr. Pym."

"A fan of the doctor's work, Beck?" Agent Hill asked. He wondered if she was teasing him.

"I'd like to speak to the good doctor, that's all." he said. "If he's going to be here, I'd like a moment of his time. I can't exactly go to meet him myself."

Both Agent Hill and Fury glanced down at his neck, where a turtleneck concealed the collar blinking ominously around his throat.

"Dr. Pym is in the city," Fury confirmed after a pause. "Not sure why, at the moment. If he intends to drop by S.H.I.E.L.D, I'll have someone inform you."

Quentin inclined his head in lieu of thanks, then took his leave.

* * *

"Beck!"

His head shot up, eyes hidden behind welding goggles.

"My office," Fury barked. "Now!"

Quentin hastened to obey, barely casting an eye over his workstation before jogging after the director.

It was late. Mid-December and darker than pitch outside; S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters were mostly empty by now, save a few solitary engineers in the lab. Seeing Fury this late wasn't unusual, except that he had left several hours prior, which usually meant he wouldn't return until the next morning.

When he reached his office, Fury gestured sharply for Quentin to close the door. He did, unnerved but not surprised to hear several electronic locks beeping to life behind him.

"What do you know about quantum physics, Beck?"

"Enough," he said, choosing to stand rather than sit. "This have something to do with Dr. Pym?"

It may have been his imagination, but he thought Fury looked almost... unsettled. His stare was piercing, expression neutral, but something felt off.

"Yes," he confirmed. "I need another set of eyes on the work he's doing right now. Eyes I can trust."

By which he meant, _eyes I control_. They both knew he didn't trust Quentin any further than he could throw him. But by the same token, they also both knew that Quentin wasn't about to turn on the man holding the kill switch connected to his neck.

"What's the project?"

"That's need to know, and you don't need to know."

"Does it involve Peter Parker?"

If possible, Fury's stare intensified.

"What makes you ask that, Beck?" he questioned suspiciously, which was answer enough.

Quentin's heart began racing.

_This is it_, whispered the afterimage of Peter in his mind. _Don't give up now, Quin._

"I'll do it."

* * *

Over the next week, Quentin got a cumulative twenty hours of sleep, if he was generous with his rounding. All the research Fury handed off to him was clearly second hand. Being that he wasn't a quantum physicist to begin with, he spent every free moment of his day deciphering scientific jargon with a studiousness he'd lacked since college.

Some nights Quentin found himself tumbling down a rabbit hole of obscure theoretical science until the early hours of the next morning. The reward of knowledge was worth the trouble. Tables and figures became more clear as he poured through reference material, harkening back to Dr. Pym's old papers and published works.

In a way, it was comforting to find that the doctor seemed as out of his depth as Quentin was. The best they could tell, Peter seemed to be vibrating on a quantum level, which was in turn allowing him to slip through the thin membrane which kept time somewhat linear. How, why, and what was to be done about it was all theory at this point.

There was one thing that Quentin knew which the doctor didn't; where Peter was going.

He was shocked, at first, to find the sheer volume of times Peter seemed to "blip" through the time stream. To Dr. Pym, the scattered markers still yielded little information, but to Quentin they formed a pattern. Between the random jumps spanning hours and minutes, there were massive outliers. Pym had noticed them, but it was Quentin who knew what they meant.

Once he was sure, had doubled back on his own memory and what few records he'd dared to keep of his own experiences, Quentin handed the files back over to Fury.

"Give these to Dr. Pym," he said. "And tell him I want to help."

* * *

Inevitably, he found himself in a room surrounded by the Pym-Van Dyne's, Fury and Agent Hill. Familiar, suspicious eyes glowered at him, judgment passed before he'd even set foot in the room. It awoke an old, school-aged part of him, which responded to such assumptions of character with spiteful wrath.

Yet, as his mother had raised him, Quentin kept his head high and his jaw set, holding his ground.

"If these dates are accurate, and I mean _if_ they are, then I want to know how a disgraced engineer managed to figure this out when we couldn't." Pym said, addressing Fury more than him.

"They're accurate," Quentin snapped, drawing the room's attention back to himself.

"How do you know that?" asked the only person to be regarding him with anything besides distaste. The man had been introduced as Scott Lang.

"I think that's what we're all wondering." Fury said.

Quentin swallowed.

There was only one way forward. Though it felt like exposing a part of himself to a room of strangers, prying open his own rib cage to reveal his beating heart, he _had_ to. It was the only way they would believe him.

"The first time I met Peter Parker," he said slowly. "I was seventeen."

Several people frowned, including Lang.

"I know when he was at those specific times, because he was with me."

* * *

"How many times has it been?"

"Of the big ones, five that we know of. The smaller blips... honestly, I stopped counting."

"Five," Quentin repeated, his voice hollow. "That leaves two more."

Hope Van Dyne laid her hand on his arm.

"We're going to figure this out, Beck. Peter's going to be okay."

Quentin couldn't find the optimism to reply. He just stared through the glass at Peter, fading in and out of existence in the desolate cube of space, completely unaware that any of them were there.

* * *

"Hey, Beck, did you go to M.I.T?"

Quentin peered over his coffee at Lang.

"Yes. Why?"

Though she tried to be subtle, he didn't miss how Hope pinched the man on her way past, leveling a glare at the back of his head. Lang laughed sheepishly.

"Oh, no reason."

* * *

Quentin still wasn't a quantum physicist, though he did know a fair bit more about the practice and theory than most "disgraced engineers" would. Despite that, Pym insisted to Fury on keeping him around. He grilled Quentin endlessly on what he could recall about the two times he'd seen Peter blip, insisting on analyzing every detail ad nauseum. More than once, Quentin had to catch himself before letting slip the nature of their relationship.

When he wasn't being interrogated by a frustrated scientist, Quentin was put to work around the lab in other ways. He was glad to keep busy, even if his companions were often giant ants and the rather talkative Ant-Man himself. If left to his own thoughts too long, he tended to just stand staring at the apparition of his daydream, wavering between timelines.

"He looks kinda like Ghost," Lang announced to the lab one day.

Though it wasn't uncommon for him to voice his thoughts aloud, Quentin still rounded on him with barely-contained anger.

"He's not fucking _dead_, Lang."

"Oh, no no no- Not _a ghost_, Ghost! She's uh," he turned to look at Hope. "A friend of ours?"

"Sort of." Hope agreed.

"Yeah, see, she had this whole thing where she sorta did the after-image-go-through-walls-thingy that Peter's got goin' on- Only just, not through time. Looked pretty much the same, though."

"It did," Hope was frowning now, mouth twisted in thought. "But she can't do that anymore. Not since coming into contact with-"

"-With _Pym Particles_." her mother interrupted. "Hank- Do you think-?"

All eyes turned to Dr. Pym. Quentin wasn't following this whole _Ghost_ thing, but he knew what a breakthrough sounded like.

"It's... simple," Dr. Pym said, standing slowly from the monitor he'd been bent over. "And the potential fallout would be- _Unless_-"

"Unless _what_?" Quentin snapped, beginning to lose his patience. "What the fuck are we talking about here?"

Janet Van Dyne turned to him.

"Ghost's affliction was cured by the Pym Particles gathered in my body during my time in the Quantum Realm. If Peter is vibrating, as we think he is, on a quantum level, then it's possible that coming into contact with the same particles might fix him too."

"Not just coming into contact, he'd need to be more or less _irradiated_ with them." Pym said gravely. "The fallout of which could have untold consequences not just on him, but on the flow of time in general."

"Unless?"

"_Unless_," the doctor continued. "We're already experiencing the fallout."

"You lost me." Lang said. Quentin wouldn't admit it aloud, but he was fairly confused too.

Pym sighed.

"It is possible that what's causing all this to happen to Peter is the fact that he came into contact with Pym Particles in the first place."

"You said that the cause of the blips could be anywhere in any time," Hope said, awareness dawning on her. "Are you saying that fixing Peter's time traveling problem is going to _cause_ it in the first place?"

"I'm not sure," Pym admitted. "But it's the most promising theory we've had in a while."

"We'll start looking at the blips again," Janet volunteered. "Quentin, come here and help me plot these."

* * *

Things happened very quickly after that.

They went back over the data they'd gathered with fresh eyes, pursuing their new theory. At first, it was the same jumble of points and numbers as before, until very suddenly it wasn't. Progress picked up traction quickly and before long, the theory had fleshed itself out into a fully formed hypothesis.

Scott and Hope volunteered to enter the Quantum Realm.

Even with his mind full of Peter, Quentin could admit that their journey into the sub-space between atoms was perhaps one of the cooler things he'd ever gotten to witness.

They returned with canisters of Pym Particles loaded and ready to be dispersed. While they'd been gone, Quentin had partnered with Janet and Dr. Pym to design what essentially amounted to a ray gun with which to irradiate the entirety of Peter's holding cell. He had to be dragged away from the plans at several points to be reminded to eat and get more than five minutes of sleep.

"Now, are you _absolutely sure_ it was eight?" Janet asked him for the hundredth time.

"Yes," Quentin said firmly, eyes fixed on the tablet in his hands. "He's just blipped out for the seventh time. He needs to come back and go again."

"He's just so..."

Janet trailed off. Quentin tightened his jaw.

"I know," he muttered. "Believe me, I know."

Peter faded to flickering afterimages transposed on top of one another. At times, it looked like he existed as countless photo-negatives stacked above each other, none in focus. Quentin stopped looking, after a while.

The eighth blip hit.

People scrambled to their places.

Their machine hummed to life, blinking lights flickering along its sleek metal casing, when Dr. Pym shouted;

"Wait!"

Everyone froze.

"Beck," Pym turned to him. "You need to be the one to throw the switch."

"_What?_" Quentin's voice was strangled. "Why?!"

"We don't know why Peter was connected to you throughout his jumps. It could be _anything_, including the simple fact that you were the man to push the button." For the first time, his expression turned sympathetic. "I'm sorry, but it needs to be you. Just in case."

"We've only got one chance to get this right." Hope added softly.

Scott squeezed his shoulder.

Quentin looked at his machine.

He'd run the diagnostics himself, more times than he could count. Dr. Pym had been over the design in triplicate, his wife had helped to draw the blueprints. S.H.I.E.L.D agents brought the parts, Quentin built the damn thing- It would work. It _had_ to work.

But what if it didn't?

"Quentin," Scott murmured. "C'mon man, Peter needs you."

He didn't have to say anything else.

* * *

There was light.

Heat.

Screaming, and not coming from any of them.

And then Peter Parker lay on the concrete floor, looking just the same as the last time Quentin had seen him.

* * *

"...And now, we're here."

Peter exhaled shakily and bowed his head. He squeezed Quentin's hands.

"Here," he repeated. "Both of us. For good this time."


	10. Reassembly Pt2

Peter never spent much time dwelling on the intangibility of memory. Recently, he'd decided it was a miracle that humanity kept hold of their past at all.

Recollection was far from an exact science, but the process of untangling old and new memories was a Herculean task not even Dr. Pym was sure how to tackle. Peter wasn't helping much, admittedly. He kept dodging vaguely around the memories of his former self, refusing to divulge exactly what had changed between the two timelines.

He could still see the train coming at him, feel the impact on his body. The memory of the bridge, Beck with E.D.I.T.H and his drones, clung stubbornly to him when he went looking for it. Only now they were foggy and distant, like scenes from a movie rather than moments from his own life.

Maybe it was selfish of him, but he wanted them to stay that way. Muddy gore at the bottom of a vast river of new memories, where he could only reach them if he really tried.

In the last few months, the Peter who Quentin saved- _him_, he supposed, though he was still having trouble wrapping his mind around that -had lived much the same life as he remembered from before. Only, interspersed with the melancholy there were vibrant shocks of Quentin's voice on the phone, pointedly needling Peter into reaching out to his friends.

"_What,_" Peter heard himself laugh, two months ago. "_You don't count?_"

"_Try someone who can actually leave a ten block perimeter of their apartment, kid._"

Although he did his best to fully embrace the new set of memories filtering into his head, there were times when he still got confused. One morning he'd spent almost twenty minutes looking for a pair of jeans he was absolutely certain he'd packed, only to realize that in this new reality, he hadn't bought them. Little things like the time and date got tangled on their way from his mind to his mouth, which meant there was a lot of;

"Uh, shoot- What day is it?"

"Still December twenty-second, Peter."

On the second morning back in his own time, someone got a hold of May. The sound of his aunt's voice nearly knocked the wind out of him. They talked for over an hour, primarily about neighborhood gossip and the unreasonable price of Christmas trees. It was so unbelievably _normal_ that it left Peter dazed.

May never asked where he was or who he was with. She kept the conversation pointedly light and at the end of the call said only;

"Miss you. I'll see you for Christmas, alright?"

"Yeah," Peter said thickly. "I'll see you, May."

Some debate was had in regards to Peter's detainment. Dr. Pym and Fury, who stopped by briefly and made what seemed to be a considerable effort to actually be _nice_ for a few minutes, were of the mind that Peter remained until there was absolute certainty he was done blipping. Quentin and Scott, who appeared to be on their way to becoming friends, bizarrely, all but demanded he be released. They were insistent that after almost four days without incident, he was clearly back to normal.

No one asked Peter's opinion, but that was okay. For the most part, he was just very happy that it was all finally over.

* * *

On Christmas Eve, he left Dr. Pym's custody.

For the lifetime Peter felt had passed, New York was the same. A gray, frost covered metropolis, maudlin with its overcoat of foul weather hanging heavy atop the skyscrapers. Christmas music played faintly from some vague direction in front of him, stubbornly bright against the sullen backdrop.

Peter breathed in the chilly winter air, chin tipped to the skyline. Lit windows shone like beacons in the fog, lighthouses guiding ships back to shore.

At long last, he was _home_.

The shadow of Quentin Beck appeared in his periphery. Peter tilted his head to meet his beloved's gaze, heart aflutter at the fond smile he found waiting for him. Quentin offered a gloved hand, which was taken, and linked their fingers tightly together.

"Ready to get out of here?" he asked.

"Abso-_fucking_-lutely."

The sound of startled laughter was music to his ears.

* * *

The end of December in New York matched Peter's mood; hopeful.

In spite of the bone-chilling cold and dirty slush lining every gutter, the city was alive with lights and merriment. Tinsel hung from scaffolding, lights crisscrossed telephone wires, and every shopfront boasted festive displays. A beat up Chevy rolled past blaring _Jingle-Bell Rock_ as loudly as it could, all four windows rolled down.

Strangers chose to spare a moment and lift their heads to share a smile as they passed.

"Merry Christmas!" a young woman called to them before tucking her scarf back up around her face.

"Happy holidays," another couple said. "Get home safe!"

They smiled, waved, and answered with holiday greetings of their own. Peter grinned at each new instance of companionable humanity, flush with the warmth of human connection.

Last he walked these streets, he felt disconnected from reality. It felt impossible, at the time, that he'd ever find his way back from the edges of his own life. He existed apart from society, outside that bubble of light and celebration he remembered from days gone by.

And now? Now he strolled his city's streets hand in hand with the man he loved. Insistent cold gnawed through the sparse layers of his winter clothes, but Quentin's palm was piping hot. Every chance he got, Peter glanced up at his love. He caught the light reflecting off tinsel into his auburn hair, and it was a little bit like magic.

"Where we headed, anyway, Quin?" he asked as industrial side streets gave way to more familiar thoroughfares.

"Somewhere."

"_Somewhere_," he repeated with playful sarcasm, purposefully bumping their shoulders together.

Quentin's smile showed off his pointy teeth.

"Why don't you just let me surprise you, huh?"

"That depends. Is it a good surprise?"

"Nope."

Peter's laughter rang out merrily, bouncing off windows and asphalt, like snow dancing through the wind. Quentin's smile widened and his hand tightened, holding fast to his daydream.

They stopped for a red light, leaning together with their hands still held between them.

Across the street, an elderly couple laughed. They were arm in arm, but used their free hands to wave and catch their attention. They pointed up, drawing both Peter and Quentin's eyes skyward, where a cartoon cutout of mistletoe hung from the stoplight.

Quentin snorted inelegantly, but looked down at Peter anyway.

"Well don't leave me hanging, daydream," he said.

Peter's cheeks hurt from beaming so wide. He reached for Quentin's neck and drew him down, meeting halfway in a chaste kiss.

* * *

It came as no surprise when they turned the corner down Quentin's street. Someone had strung the potted ferns outside the entryway with baubles and garlands, and hung lights from the front desk.

"Evening Mark," Quentin greeted the doorman as they crossed the foyer.

"Evening, Mr. Beck," the graying man replied. "Ah, and Mr. Parker too. Happy holidays!"

"You too!" Peter said over his shoulder, then turned to quietly say; "I guess I've been here before?"

They mounted the now-familiar stairway up to the apartment, fingers loosely linked.

"I don't know," Quentin drawled. "Have you?"

"_Qui-in_!"

"Nope," he said, popping the 'p'. "You tell me, Peter."

Pouting, Peter allowed himself to fall into step just behind his lover and closed his eyes.

Searching his catalogue of new memories had become easier over the last few days. Before, he combed through whole days looking for one changed fragment of the past, and now it took only a thought now to propel him to the right memory. He focused on the image of Quentin's apartment, on Rosemary winding around his heels, and found himself there.

Two months ago, he knocked on the door, a bag of fresh bagels in his other hand. ( _Why did I bring him bagels?_ he wondered now. ) The door swung open after the fourth knock and there stood Quentin, hair pulled back at his nape, looking startled.

_"Oh, hey,"_ Peter saw himself saying as he walked into Quentin's living room. _"I've got a jacket like that."_

"...You kept my _coat_?" the present Peter asked, eyes blinking open again.

Quentin cast a look over his shoulder.

"I've kept everything you left me with, daydream."

It was good that Quentin knew he was Spiderman, because there was no real way to explain the gymnastics it took to launch himself up at his lover otherwise. If he wasn't expecting it, Quentin didn't let it show, rocking back without stumbling. Their mouths crashed together, Peter's free hand curled into the thick hair now covering the nape of Quentin's neck.

With the Pym-Van Dyne's and S.H.I.E.L.D observing them so closely over the last week, the most intimacy they'd dared was holding hands and the occasional lingering hug. As sweet as the gentle kiss at the crosswalk had been, Peter's desire for his lover had been pacing hungrily inside his ribcage for days.

They stumbled up the stairs, mouths locked together. Peter tangled his fingers into Quentin's hair, instantly obsessed with the newfound length and playful waves. He wasn't sure where Quentin's gloves went, only that the fingers worming their way under his layers were bare and cool against his skin.

Miraculously, they neither missed a step nor went somersaulting back down the stairs in a grisly tangle, and instead made it to the landing almost without incident.

"Wait- Wait, wait wait, stop for a sec-"

"Don't _wanna_," Peter whined, chasing Quentin's retreating mouth. He nipped his upper lip and smiled when the beginnings of a groan caught in his throat.

"I said _wait_, you little _devil_," he growled, stepping backwards in an attempt to put real space between them as they approached the apartment.

Abruptly, the door swung open, startling Peter. The quest to corner his escaping lover fled his mind. He blinked dumbly in shock.

Of all people, his Aunt May was standing in the doorway to Quentin Beck's apartment.

"About _time_, you two," she admonished, hand on her hip. "Your friends from work showed up almost an hour ago! Oh, Beck, we opened the wine without you, hope you don't mind."

"Not at all-"

"_May_?" Peter interjected, flabbergasted. "What are you-? What are you _doing_ here?"

May gave him the exasperated smile she reserved for him in his more airheaded moments.

"And it's nice to see you too, kiddo," she said. "Mr. Beck volunteered his kitchen for Christmas dinner, remember?"

No, he did _not_ remember.

"You," he stammered. "You don't... cook?"

"Well," May amended. "He also offered his cooking skills, which was more of a deciding factor than the kitchen."

Peter looked to Quentin, still flushed around the cheekbones, who gave a lopsided smile and a lazy shrug.

"Surprise," he said.

Then he frowned, as if just realizing something, and turned to May.

"Did you say _friends from work_?"

* * *

Rather than upset, Quentin seemed vaguely resigned when they walked in and found the Pym-Van Dyne's scattered around his living room like they belonged there.

"Nice place you got here, Beck," Hope said, smile mischievous.

"Please tell me you've got more than white wine sitting around," Dr. Pym said, despite having a nearly empty glass of wine in hand.

"Scotch or bourbon?"

"Bourbon. What kind of question is that?"

"How are you feeling, Peter?" Janet asked, matronly as ever.

"Oh, uh, good," Peter fumbled. "Great."

Rosemary, previously being entertained by a floor-bound Scott, hopped onto the back of the couch and meowed until he reached out to pet her. He ended up with an armful of black cat, who then migrated to his shoulders. She began purring like a small motorboat almost directly into his ear.

"Come on, sit down!" May chastised playfully, depositing herself on the couch beside Hope. "You look like you're about to run out of here."

Peter hesitated.

May was wrong, he didn't feel like fleeing from the company of his friends and family, it was just- Well. He hadn't counted on them _being_ here.

He glanced towards the kitchen, where he could see Quentin discussing the contents of his liquor cabinet with Dr. Pym. They appeared to be arguing over some fancy looking bottle with a label Peter couldn't see, but their body language read as relaxed. Rosemary rubbed against his cheek.

Peter smiled.

"Budge over, then," he said, shooing May towards the middle of the couch.

"Alright, alright," she sighed. "Now, you, Scott, promised us magic tricks."

* * *

If you'd asked Peter on December first where he expected to spend Christmas Eve, he would have said at home with May and their heaping collection of Christmas movies. If you had then told him that he would _actually_ be spending Christmas Eve in the home of Quentin Beck along with his aunt and all four members of the Pym-Van Dyne family, he probably would've asked if you needed a doctor.

Yet, there he was.

And at some point, someone gave him a glass of wine, so that was nice too.

* * *

May and Hope reclaimed the couch as their domain and sat facing each other, talking over the last of the white wine. Peter, now situated on the loveseat, nursed his glass. It was nice to see his aunt making a friend. Honestly though, he wasn't really sure how to insert himself into the conversation.

Scott reappeared from the kitchen, a stolen hunk of bread in hand, and sat himself on the arm of the chair. He offered Peter some of the baguette, which he accepted. They sat in companionable silence, eating and watching the women in their lives. May leaned into Hope, shaking with uproarious laughter, cheeks pinker than usual from the wine.

Eventually, Scott said;

"We're headed back to California tomorrow."

"Oh."

Peter couldn't hide the disappointment from his tone. A month being yanked through the space-time continuum meant he hadn't actually gotten a chance to spend much time with Scott. Or Hope, or Dr. Pym for that matter. He'd been looking forward to a few days with them, sans the potentially life-ending dilemmas.

Scott nudged him with his elbow, breaking his moment of melancholy. He grinned, tossing his arm around Peter's shoulders and gave him a friendly squeeze.

"You've got my number, Pete," he reassured. "Drop me a line any time. I mean it."

Peter's mouth twitched into a sheepish smile.

"Thanks, Scott."

"Just, maybe next time you could _not_ be doing a jig through time. Y'know?"

* * *

Quentin clearly meant to cook dinner entirely on his own. Janet wasn't having it. She drafted Hope and, briefly, Scott into helping in the kitchen, only to kick the former out within ten minutes.

Peter was unsurprised that, once Scott had been drawn into conversation with May, Dr. Pym appeared beside him. Since being cemented back in his appropriate time, he'd been waiting for the inevitable confrontation with the doctor.

"Peter."

"Dr. Pym."

Silence passed between them, filled by May's laughter. The doctor sighed.

"Peter," he repeated. "We both know something changed. Nick Fury knows it too."

Peter pointedly sipped his wine. His free hand ran along Rosemary's back, prompting her to stretch across his lap luxuriously.

"All I want to know is if there's anything we should be made aware of now, before it starts making waves."

"That depends," Peter said. "Will this stay between us, Dr. Pym?"

"Yes."

"Can I hold you to that?"

"I've got no love for S.H.I.E.L.D or Nick Fury, kid. I just want to make sure the world doesn't go and implode again."

Peter glanced at the doorway into the kitchen. Dr. Pym followed his gaze.

Hope, tipsy, braced herself against the counter and shook with laughter. Quentin had flour on his shirtfront. He'd rolled his sleeves up to reveal his tanned forearms and was grinning, clearly pleased with himself. Janet looked torn between scolding him and her daughter.

She smacked them both lightly with a dishtowel, her admonishments lost as she shooed the laughing pair back to their stations. Hope punched Quentin in the shoulder as he ducked past her. However he retaliated, it made her jump.

"...Yeah," Peter said. "Something changed."

He tore his eyes away and looked up at Dr. Pym, meeting his solemn gaze.

"I didn't mean for it to change. I didn't do it on purpose. But it's different now, and I don't want it to ever go back to the way it was before."

Dr. Pym swirled the ice in his glass.

"And you're prepared to live with the consequences of that?" he asked.

"The consequences can't possibly be worse than how it was before."

Dr. Pym nodded.

"Alright, then," he said. "That's all I wanted to know.

* * *

Dinner was delicious.

They crammed themselves around Quentin's dining table, squashed elbow to elbow in some places, with plates piled high with piping hot food. There was red wine, which was poured into every glass, including Peter's, and passed around the table in a constant circle. Whenever someone was eating, someone else was talking, and so the meal was never silent.

Peter laughed so hard his chest hurt and found himself relaying stories he'd never shared before. He gestured with his hands as he described heroic escapades and failed attempts, dissolving into giggles whenever May or Quentin would look at him in incredulous horror.

Janet got Dr. Pym talking about their younger days and Scott, ever the storyteller, kept them entertained with a surprising array of hysterical stories from his stint in prison.

Somehow, Peter got roped into dish duty with May. He would put it down to her powers of persuasion, but he was also tipsy, so that probably had something to do with it.

She washed, he dried and set the dishes on the rack, working in amicable silence. The wine's effects were already beginning to wear off, no doubt thanks to his healing factor, and he was enjoying the last of the pleasant buzz.

"So," May said. "You gonna spend the night here with Beck?"

Peter attributed the next few seconds entirely to his spider-senses, as a plate slipped through his fingers, plummeted to the floor, and then was briskly swept back up onto the rack.

"I, uh-"

"That's a yes."

"May-" he started, only for his aunt to wave him off.

She smiled gently.

"He's a good guy, Peter."

Shocked, he stared wide-eyed at her.

The thought of how to go about addressing his relationship with Quentin to anyone else in his life hadn't even occurred to him. It sat so far down on his list of priorities that it hardly even registered. And yet, May's acceptance, even before knowing the extent of the bond between them, tilted his world on its axis.

"Although," she continued, just as Peter was considering hugging her. "The _age difference_ is a little risque. Didn't know you were an older man kinda guy."

"_May!_" Peter squawked, scandalized.

"Oh, come on, I'm being supportive! I deserve to make fun of you and your sugar daddy. And speaking of, you two _better_ be using protection, mister."

"_MAY!_"

* * *

Everyone packed together at the front door to say their goodbyes. May hugged Peter tightly and made him promise to be home _sometime_ the next day. Scott surprised him by seconding May's hug, adding a murmured promise to get his aunt home safe. Dr. Pym patted his shoulder, then turned to Quentin.

"Beck," he addressed, offering his hand. "I'm shocked to be saying this, but it's been a genuine pleasure working with you. Once your tenure with S.H.I.E.L.D is up..."

Quentin shook his hand.

"I've got your number." he assured.

They filtered out and down the stairs, waving their last goodbyes until they disappeared from view. Peter shut the door and turned both locks, exhaling a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. His hand drifted absently to the light switch as he turned back to the living room, casting the hall into shadow.

He caught Quentin's back while he carried the few remaining dishes to the sink and considered following for a moment. On the one hand, he wanted to soak up every spare moment he had with Quentin. On the other, they had all night, he decided, and sprawling out on the couch seemed far more appealing.

Collapsed onto the cushions, he clocked the sound of running water from the kitchen. It cut off quickly, followed by his lover reappearing in the doorway. Peter lifted his legs off the couch in invitation and Quentin laughed. He took the offered seat.

"Hey," he hummed, laying a hand on the legs now resting across his lap. "Hi there, pretty boy."

"Hello yourself, handsome."

"How ya feeling?"

"Full. Happy. Ready to sleep for the next fifteen years."

"Could I persuade you to maybe not do that?"

"Depends," Peter lifted himself on his elbows. "What kind of persuasion, Mr. Beck?"

"I'd be happy to demonstrate, but you're going to have to sit up more. Not all of us are as flexible as you, Spiderman."

Peter chuckled breathily and sat up so Quentin could take his chin and guide him into a kiss.

"Will that suffice?" he murmured against his mouth. Peter hummed.

"I think," he said, fingers drawn magnetically back into his lover's hair. "You could do more persuading."

"Well, if you insist..."

The kiss was languid, a slow exploration of familiar territory. Quentin's lips parted easily when Peter sought to deepen their kiss, and he tasted like bourbon and cranberry. A hand braced between Peter's shoulders, the other squeezing a patternless rhythm around his calf.

They parted, nose to nose and no further. Up close, Peter could see oceans in Quentin's eyes.

The backdrop of bells and choirs from the radio changed to the opening chords of _Walking in a Winter Wonderland_.

"I love this song."

"You do?"

"Mm," Quentin smiled. "Dance with me?"

"You'll have to lead," warned Peter. "I've never danced before."

"Don't worry, I have."

"Of _course_ you have."

Moving the coffee table would have been the smart thing to do, but that didn't occur to them until they were already swaying in the small space between it and the mantle. They compensated for the lack of space by leaning into one another and finding places for their hands that required they be even closer still. Quentin's made their way beneath Peter's shirt to lay against the curve of his spine, while Peter laced his fingers against the back of his neck.

The lyrics may have escaped him, but the melody nestled itself into Peter's chest as his beloved guided him in slow circles. His eyes trailed across the face of the man he loved, soaking in the minutia. There were faint traces of gray in his beard and smile lines framing his eyes. He wore his age with grace and pride, with the same flare of mischief in his eyes he'd had when he was young.

In a way, he'd seen Quentin Beck grow up. Watched youth and mischief become hubris and charisma, then settle into a comfortable confidence. From a boy who built the Millennium Falcon and hoped to go to MIT to a man, finally at peace with himself.

"...You waited for me," Peter said. "After all this time, you were still waiting for me."

"Peter," Quentin exhaled.

Somehow, he drew him closer, pressing his face to the crook of his neck. The skin he kissed burned, and Peter sighed, tilting his head to feel the brand of his beloved's lips.

"I've waited my whole life for you, Peter."

His breath caught. The overwhelming urge to cry nearly buckled Peter's legs, sweeping through him like a wave.

"Quin, I _tried_," he swore. "I wanted to stay. When you told me to meet you the next day, and when we first- I didn't know I'd just blip out like that, I would've said _goodbye_-"

"Daydream-"

"No," Peter pulled back. "I need you to know that I _tried_, baby. I didn't mean to at first, I knew I wasn't supposed to change things, but you- Fuck, Quentin. _You._"

The hands once on his back became nails digging grooves into his skin and a palm against his jaw, holding him still as Quentin kissed him with all the passion of a man left yearning. It was hungry, filthy, and brimming with the _years_ they'd spent apart. Peter answered with all of his longing, his fierce devotion, and forgot to breathe until he was already left gasping for breath.

"You came back to me," Quentin husked. "Whether I deserved it or not. Nothing else matters, daydream. Just you 'nd me, here and now."

"Promise me I'm not gonna lose you, Quin. I can't do that again."

He laughed sharply.

"Don't think you could even if you wanted to, sweetheart." he said dryly, tugging the high collar of his shirt.

Peter's stomach turned when he saw the metal collar strapped around Quentin's throat. No matter how much he looked at it, he felt the same spike of indignant rage. It was good that Fury had made himself scarce, because the moment he came face to face with him again there was going to be hell to pay.

He dragged his fingers along the band of skin just above the metal ring.

"You realize I'm going to get this thing off you, right?"

"My shirt? Well I was hoping you might..."

"_Quin_, you know what I meant."

Quentin's expression softened.

"I know," he said. "But let's not think about that now."

He kissed the furrow from Peter's brow, then the faint frown from his lips. It was hard to remember whatever counterpoint he may have had with Quentin's mouth on his. Peter gave in swiftly, sliding his hands down broad shoulders to squeeze the firm muscle of his biceps appreciatively.

"I love you," he said.

Something slow and melodic hummed from the radio, replacing the jaunty tune from earlier with more choirs and Christmas bells. Both of Quentin's hands snuck back under the hem of Peter's shirt, dragging the fabric up his back.

"Peter..." he breathed. "I love you so much, daydream. I'm going to spend the rest of eternity trying to make up for what I almost did to you."

"What'd you just say, huh? _Let's not think about that right now_." he kissed Quentin's sad smile gently. "You know what I _have_ been thinking about?"

"What's that?"

He wound his arms around his lover's neck, forcing the taller man to lean into him.

"How much I wanna have sex with you again."

Quentin didn't even bother to reply, just grabbed Peter's thighs and hoisted him up against his chest. Laughing with surprise, Peter hooked his legs around his lover's waist and hung on. He took advantage of his new position by attacking the underside of Quentin's jaw with playful kisses and bites, relishing every bitten-off swear he got for his trouble.

On the way to the bedroom, he lost his shirt and toed off his socks. Divesting Quentin of his clothing was more difficult, as he was clinging to him, but he managed to at least hike his shirt up over his pecs. In fact he was so busy sucking a hickie into his neck and fondling his chest that Peter was taken completely off-guard when he was abruptly tipped backwards onto the bed.

With an ungainly squeak, he went toppling onto the mattress, landing with an _oomph_. Quentin laughed and followed him, placing a knee between his thighs and tugging impatiently at the denim on his legs.

"Oh no, you first!" Peter giggled. "Shirt _off_!"

"When'd you get so bossy?" Quentin asked, though he'd already sat back to pull his shirt over his head.

"We got interrupted last time."

"And _I'm_ the one who's been waiting years to fuck you again."

"Oh yeah?" Peter hooked his fingers into Quentin's belt loops, yanking him closer and himself upright in one motion. "Then you should probably hurry up and do that."

"You're so fucking-" he cut himself off with a growl, shoving Peter back onto the sheets before digging his teeth into his neck.

The harsh bite made Peter's cock twitch and he groaned, tossing his head back appreciatively. Quentin took advantage of his exposed throat, apparently past being concerned whether anyone knew the nature of their relationship. The marks he was leaving wouldn't fade for ages.

One hand gripped the sheets, the other tethered itself in Quentin's wavy locks, leaving his lover to undress them both. He did, with very little care to where their remaining clothes ended up or what state they'd be in when they found them again. Not that Peter cared either. As soon as he was naked he hooked a leg around Quentin's thigh and flipped their positions, straddling his waist.

He spared a moment to admire the flush rising on Quentin's cheekbones and the hunger in his gaze, then slid down, nudging his way between his knees. A shudder passed through his lover as he kissed a trail down the center of his chest, open mouth leaving wet, pink marks on his skin. Again, he paused, this time to worry a mark on the taut flesh of Quentin's belly while his hands made inelegant work of his pants.

Something popped, or tore, either way it was probably the fault of Peter's strength and he didn't care enough to stop and investigate what it was. The important thing was that Quentin's pants were gone and his boxers were soon to follow, dragged down his thighs and kicked off at the ankle.

Peter nosed the mess of dark curls at the base of Quentin's dick.

"All good, baby?"

"Yeah," Quentin groaned, dragging a hand over his face. "Fuck, of course- If I fucking drank too much, I _swear_."

Peter kissed his semi-flaccid cock affectionately.

"Pretty sure you were the one who told me there was more to sex than just fucking."

"Have you been saving all this sass for when I love you too much to get mad at you?"

"Yep!"

Quentin's grumbled response cut off the moment Peter started kissing down the length of his member, ending at the head with a playful lick. He rolled his hips sinuously upwards, which was dizzyingly attractive all on its own without the implications. The half-formed thought to tease his lover fled Peter's mind entirely and he opened his mouth, easily sliding his cock between his lips.

There was something empowering about feeling Quentin growing hard in his mouth. Peter smoothed his palms up to his belly, cataloging every twitch and jump of Quentin's muscles. The way his stomach tightened if he sucked on him gently, how his legs tensed with every pass of his tongue; it felt like being drunk all over again.

One of Quentin's hands nested into his curls. Every now and again he gripped, tugged, then let go, only to do it again moments later. Each pull only served to make Peter rut his hips against the sheets, seeking unsatisfying friction. When he began to bob his head, the hand not in his hair cupped his face, thumb stroking the hollow of his cheek.

"_Fuck!_" Quentin swore. Peter had swallowed him as far as he could and his hips jerked up in response. Peter gagged and pulled back, a string of saliva trailing between his tongue and the head of his prick. "Shit- Sorry, sweetheart, are you-?"

" 'm good," he assured, though his voice sounded rougher than before.

"Come here..."

Peter allowed himself to be drawn up into an apologetic kiss.

Their positions flipped again. Now, Quentin's arms framed Peter's head, caging him in underneath his larger body. The kiss turned filthy and Peter spread his legs, welcoming his lover between them. The first time their hips rocked together made him claw at Quentin's back, earning an appreciative snarl.

Again, he churned down against Peter's slighter frame. There was no mistaking his arousal now. His cock was a searing weight against Peter's trembling belly, leaving slick promises on his skin. He whined into a kiss he couldn't escape, grinding up against the soft hair on Quentin's stomach.

"Quin, Quin, Quin, Quin," he panted, words slurred with breathlessness. "Need you baby, want you..."

"Okay, sugar, okay," Quentin soothed, nuzzling kisses against his jaw. "Let me get the lube 'nd condom. You gotta let me go for a sec, Peter."

"Do we hafta...?"

"What," he paused. "Use a condom?"

Peter nodded, flush rising up his neck.

"No. Not if you don't want to, sweetheart."

"I don't wanna."

Quentin kissed him gently.

"Okay. No condom. You still have to let me up."

Reluctantly, he did. There wasn't far for Quentin to go to reach the nightstand drawer, yet Peter reached for him as though he were slipping away. The pads of his fingers slid along the notches of his beloved's spine, trying to memorize how the bone shifted beneath his skin.

"Just relax," Quentin murmured, returning with lube in hand.

He settled back between his knees, stroking the soft skin of his inner thighs.

"Let me take care of you, Peter."

Fingers ran over the curve of his left buttock and up the underside of his thigh, sending shivers down his spine. Quentin eased his leg back towards his chest and Peter's fingers curled into the sheets beside his head.

They were in no rush. Quentin took his time warming the lube and slicking three of his fingers, holding his lover's gaze as he did. Peter watched through hooded eyes, content to teeter on the edge of arousal and desperation. The anticipation only served to heighten the moment, drive home how badly he wanted this.

Quentin leaned in and kissed him, pressing the pad of his slicked finger to his hole. Peter made a low noise in his throat, his fingers flexing around the sheets. Then, he was being entered, and he broke their kiss to sigh and arch his head back. His beloved kissed down his chest.

"Good?" he prompted.

"Yeah," Peter breathed. Quentin had already begun to work the single digit in and out of him slowly. "You can..."

"Another?"

"Uh-huh."

The second finger brought a low burn that made his insides twinge. When he began to rock back against three fingers stretching him open, Quentin seemed to decide he'd been prepared enough. He sat back and stroked lube over his leaking cock, smearing precum over the head with his thumb.

"Roll over for me, sweetheart."

"Mmh, 'kay..."

Peter turned onto his stomach and grabbed for one of the nearby pillows. It smelled like Quentin's shampoo; coconut and hibiscus.

He allowed his hips to be guided up, knees spread to accommodate his lover between them again. Peter rocked back, breathing a sigh when the weight of Quentin's cock nestled between his cheeks. A hand gently spread him, allowing the head of his lover's cock to nudge against his entrance.

"Ready?"

"More than," Peter promised.

He couldn't see Quentin's smile, but he knew it was there.

In one slow motion, Quentin sheathed himself almost to the root within Peter's body. At once, every nerve was electrified, each place his skin was touched a livewire. Where both Quentin's hands held his waist, thumbs fitted into the divots above his ass, felt like a belt of fire. The dull ache of being entered was a pulse through his body, a drumbeat of gratification.

Peter moaned and twisted the sheets in his fist. His hips pressed back to meet Quentin's, gratefully engulfing as much of him as he could. At last, they pressed flush together, the moment marked by twin groans of satisfaction. They indulged in a pregnant pause, reveling in the feeling of being joined together.

"Fuck..." Quentin breathed.

He eased back, hissing his pleasure, and gave one shallow thrust. Peter exhaled sharply.

"Baby," he panted. "I'm not gonna break."

"Fuck," Quentin swore again. "I know, I just-"

Laughing breathily, he dropped his forehead between Peter's shoulder blades.

"Shit, I've been waiting for you so long, not sure I can _last_."

"Me neither," Peter admitted, echoing his laugh. "Let's go slow, 'kay?"

"Yeah..."

The murmured affirmation was followed by a trail of kisses laid from between Peter's shoulder blades up to the nape of his neck. Strong arms encircled his torso, the weight of his lover bearing gently down on his back. Peter reached over his shoulder in search of his thick mane of hair and sank his fingers into the dark locks.

Quentin rocked forward, grinding into Peter's clutching heat. The angle wasn't quite right to hit his prostate dead on, but Peter still moaned like it was. He pushed back, meeting the slow undulation of Quentin's lips and dragging another drunken sound of enjoyment from them both.

They moved together like that for who knew how long, chasing their release as much as running from it. Countless hickies littered Peter's neck and shoulders, courtesy of Quentin's restless mouth. The wide palms on his front stroked from his neck to his thighs, skimming oh-so-close to his weeping prick with every pass. Peter choked back sobs, tugging Quentin's hair while molten ecstasy threatened to overwhelm him.

"Daydream," Quentin panted against his skin.

He reached up to grasp the hand in his hair, pulling tangled fingers free. Their joined hands fell to the mattress, grip tight enough their knuckles lost all color.

"Peter, daydream, sweetheart," Quentin chanted into the crook of his neck. "I'm almost there, I can't keep goin' slow-"

"Harder," Peter interjected breathlessly. "Fuck me harder, Quin."

No further prompting was needed. Growling low, Quentin shoved himself up. His arms braced with both of Peter's hands held securely in his own, pinning them to the mattress.

The first thrust was experimental, new angle eliciting a whine of need from Peter. Quentin dragged his hips back again and drove forward, this time striking true. Peter wailed, stars exploding across his vision, whole body tensing in response to the dizzying bolt of pleasure. Teeth skated over his shoulder blade, then Quentin began to move in earnest.

It was glorious. A delirious dance of pain and pleasure across every nerve ending. The crescendo came with every powerful thrust, pounding over and over into his prostate. Quentin hung over him, mouth open in a litany of moans and swears. Peter ached, thighs so tense they shook, precum dribbling from the head of his cock.

He tipped over the edge of euphoria first. A rapturous scream rent the air, his orgasm a blinding light behind his closed eyelids. Quentin's blunt nails bit into the skin of his palms and he didn't care, didn't want it to stop. His movements became desperate, erratic, and then he howled, slamming once more as deep into Peter as he could reach.

Without protection, he spilled deep inside his lover's lax body. The sensation was like swallowing something hot and feeling it travel all the way to his belly, only better, more fulfilling.

"Fuck," Peter sighed happily.

Quentin laughed breathlessly.

It was only good manners which kept them from collapsing then and there. Unplanned as their lovemaking may have been, Quentin at least had a spare sheet to toss over the mess they'd made so they wouldn't be laying in it. He pulled out of Peter and retrieved a bottle of water from his nightstand, offering it to his gasping partner after taking a swig himself.

Then, they did collapse. Peter rolled over and flung his leg across Quentin's thighs, tucking himself against his side with an incoherent mumble of contentment. Drowsiness clouded the edges of his vision, but he wasn't ready for sleep yet.

He drifted, eyes half-shut, with the rhythmic petting of Quentin's fingers along his side. The wonderful side-effect to his healing factor was that his refractory time was next to nothing, and minutes later he blinked back into focus.

"Still with me, Quin?" he asked, dropping a kiss over Quentin's heart.

"More or less."

Peter crowded over Quentin, sealing their lips together in a tender kiss. It occurred to him, not for the first time that night, that there was no longer any rush. Time had been their enemy before, but now it moved for them at the same pace as it did the rest of the world. He could lay here kissing Quentin until dawn came and still have years left to do it again.

They parted slowly, exchanging a breathy sigh of happiness. Quentin rubbed Peter's back gently.

"Could you grab me the water?"

"Course, baby."

A quick peck, then he rolled over and sat up to snag the water from the nightstand again. He handed it to his lover, then flopped back down beside him.

Looking up at the ceiling, Peter was met by the image of plastic stars laid out in constellations above them.

"Those are..." he started. "When did you put those up again?"

Quentin looked up, then back down at Peter.

"You mentioned that you liked them," he said. "And I wanted them to be here when you got back."

He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, like he hadn't just said something incredible. As if he hadn't remembered words Peter said on a whim during what may have been one of the worst days of his life and held onto them for years. Like the stars weren't laid out in real constellations, like he hadn't taken time to buy them, put them up, and had to stare at them every night.

Because Peter said he liked them. Because Peter would see them.

"I love you _so fucking much_," Peter breathed.

He kissed Quentin with all the love and passion he could muster, enough to knock them both back to the mattress. They rolled and tangled, held tightly in each other's arms with nothing left to pry them apart.

Unnoticed by either of them, the clock on the wall ticked to one minute past midnight.

A new day had begun and Peter was right where he belonged.


End file.
